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HISTORY

OF THE

State of California

AND

BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

Oakland and Environs

ALSO

Containing Biographies of Well-Known Citizens of the Past and Present.

' - - - -~B¥ —

J, M. Guinn, A. M.

Secretary and Late President of the'Historical Society of Southern California, and Member
of the American Historical Association of Washington, D. C.

ILLUSTRATED

COMPLETE IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOLUME I.

SAN r K A 1 4 O ) owU
PUBLIC LIBRARY

HISTORIC RECORD CO.

LOS ANGELES.

HISTORIC RECORD COMPANY.

60733

PREFACE.

EW states of the Union have a more varied, a more interesting or a more instructive history

than California, and few have done so little to preserve their history. In this statement

I do not contrast California with older states of the Atlantic seaboard, but draw a parallel
between our state and the more recently created states of the far west, many years younger in
statehood than the Golden State of the Pacific.

When Kansas and Nebraska were uninhabited except by buffaloes and Indians, California
was a populous state pouring fifty millions of gold yearly into the world's coffers. For more than
a quarter of a century these states, from their public funds, have maintained state historical
societies that have gathered and are preserving valuable historical material, while California, with-
out a protest, has allowed literary pot hunters and speculative curio collectors to rob her of her
historical treasures. When Washington, Montana and the two Dakotas were Indian hunting
grounds, California was a state of a quarter million inhabitants ; each of these states now has its
State Historical Society supported by appropriations from its public funds.

California, of all the states west of the Mississippi river, spends nothing from its public funds
to collect and preserve its history.

To a lover of California, this is humiliating ; to a student of her history exasperating. While
preparing this History of California I visited all the large public libraries of the state. I found in
all of them a very limited collection of books on California, and an almost entire absence of man-
uscripts and of the rarer books of the earlier eras. Evidently tbe demand for works pertaining
to California history is net very insistent. If it were, more of an effort would be put forth to
procure them.

The lack of interest in our history is due largely to tbe fact that California was settled by
one nation and developed by another. In the rapid development of the state by the conquering
nation, the trials, struggles and privations of the first colonists who were of another nation have
been ignored or forgotten. No forefathers' day keeps their memory green, no observance cele-
brates the anniversary of their landing. To many of its people the history of California begins
with the discovery of gold, and all before that time is regarded as of little importance.

The race characteristics of the two peoples who have dominated California, differ widely : and
from this divergence arises the lack of sympathetic unison. Perhaps no better expression for
this difference can be given than is found in the popular by-words of each. The "poco tiempo"
(by and by) of the Spaniard is significant of a people who are willing to wait — who would defer
action till manana — to-morrow — rather than act with haste to-day. Tbe "go ahead" of the Amer-
ican is indicative of hurry, of rush, of a strenuous existence, of a people impatient of present con-
ditions.

In narrating the story of California, I have endeavored to deal justly with tbe different eras
and episodes of its history; to state facts; to tell tbe truth without favoritism or prejudice: to give

PREFACE.

ere. lit where credit is due and censure where it is deserved. In the preparation of this history I
have endeavored to make it readable and reliable.

The subject matter is presented by topic and much of it in monographic form. I have
deemed it better to treat fully important topics even if by so doing some minor events be ex-
cluded. In gathering material for this work, I have examined the collections in a number of li-
braries, public and private, have consulted state, county and city archives, and have scanned thou-
sands of pages of newspapers and magazines. Where extracts have been made from authorities,
due credit lias been given in the body of the work. I have received valuable assistance from li-
brarians, from pioneers of the state, from city and county officials, from editors and others. To
all who have assisted me I return my sincere thanks.

J. M. Guinn. .

Los Angeles, December i, 1908.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

Spanish Explorations and Discoveries 33

Romance and Reality — The Seven Cities of Cibola — The Myth of Quivera — El Dorado —
Sandoval's Isle of the Amazons — Mutineers Discover the Peninsula of Lower California
■ — Origin of the Name California — Cortes's Attempts at Colonization — Discovery of the
Rio Colorado — Coronado's Explorations — Ulloa's Voyage.

CHAPTER II.

Alta or Nueva California 37

Voyage of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo — Enters the Bay of San Diego in Alta California —
Discovers the Islands of San Salvador and Vitoria — The Bay of Smokes and Fires — The
Santa Barbara Islands — Reaches Cape Mendocino — His Death and Burial on the Island of
San Miguel — Ferrolo Continues the Voyage — Drake, the Sea King of Devon — His Hatred
of the Spaniard — Sails into the South Sea — Plunders the Spanish Settlements of the South
Pacific — Vain Search for the Straits of Anian — Refits His Ships in a California Harbor —
Takes Possession of the Country for the English Queen — Sails Across the Pacific Ocean
to Escape the Vengeance of the Spaniards — Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeho Attempts a
Survey of the California Coast — Loss of the San Agustin — Sufferings of the Shipwrecked
Mariners — Sebastian Viscaino's Explorations — Makes No New Discoveries — Changes the
Names Given by Cabrillo to the Bays and Islands — Some Boom Literature — Failure of
His Colonization Scheme — His Death.

t$ t$

CHAPTER III.

Colonization of Alta California 43

Jesuit Missions of Lower California — Father Kino or Kuhn's Explorations — Expulsion of
the Jesuits — Spain's Decadence — Her Northwestern Possessions Threatened by the Rus-
sians and English — The Franciscans to Christianize and Colonize Alta California — Galvez
Fits Out Two Expeditions— Their Safe Arrival at San Diego — First Mission Founded —
Portola's Explorations — Fails to Find Monterey Bay — Discovers the Bay of San Fran-
cisco— Return of the Explorers — Portola's Second Expedition — Founding of San Carlos
Mission and the Presidio of Monterey.

v£

CHAPTER IV.

Aborigines of California 49

Inferiority of the California Indian — No Great Tribes — Indians of the San Gabriel Valley —
Hugo Reid's Description of Their Government — Religion and Customs — Indians of the
Santa Barbara Channel — Their God Chupu — Northern Indians — Indian Myths and Tra-
ditions.

COX TENTS.

CHAPTER V.

PAGE
• 56

Franciscan Missions of Alta California

Founding of San Diego de Alcali-San Carlos Barromeo-San Antonio de Padua-San
Gabriel Arcangel-San Luis Obispo-San Francisco de Asis-San Juan Capistrano— Santa
Clara-San Buenaventura— Santa Barbara-La Purisima Concepcion— Santa Cruz— La
Soledad— San Jose— San Juan Bautista— San Miguel— San Fernando del Rey, San Luis
Rey, Santa Ynez— San Rafael— San Francisco Solano— Architecture— General Plan of the
Missionary Establishments— Houses of the Neophytes— Their Uncleanliness.

CHAPTER VI.

Presidios of California

Presidio in Colonization— Founding of San Diego— General Plan of the Presidio— Found-
ing of Monterey— Rejoicing over the Event— Hard Times at the Presidio— Bear Meat Diet
—Two Hundred Immigrants for the Presidio— Founding of the Presidio of San Francisco

Anza's Overland Route from Sonora — Quarrel with Rivera — Anza's Return to Sonora —

Founding of Santa Barbara — Disappointment of Father Serra — Quarrel of the Captain with
the Missionaries over Indian Laborers— Soldiers' Dreary Life at the Presidios.

CHAPTER VII.

Pueblos • 7$

Pueblo Plan of Colonization — Necessity for Agricultural Colonies — Governor Filipe de
Neve Selects Pueblo Sites — San Jose Founded — Named for the Patron Saint of California

Area of the Spanish Pueblc — Government Supplies to Colonists — Founding ot the

Pueblo of Los Angeles — Names of the Founders — Probable Origin of the Name — Sub-
divisions of Pueblo Lands — Lands Assigned to Colonists — Founding of Branciforte, the
last Spanish Pueblo.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Passing of Spain's Domination 7&

Spain's Exclusiveness — The First Foreign Ship in Monterey Bay — Vancouver's Visit —
Government Monopoly of the Fur Trade — American Smugglers — The Memorias — Russian
Aggression — Famine at Sitka — Rezanoff's Visit — A Love Affair and Its Tragic Ending—
Fort Ross — Failure of the Russian Colony Scheme — The War of Mexican Independence —
Sola the Royalist Governor — California Loyalists — The Year of Earthquakes — Bouchard
the Privateer Burns Monterey — The Lima Tallow Ships — Hard Times — No Money and
Little Credit — The Friars Supreme.

J& v* &

CHAPTER IX.

From Empire to Republic 82

S.il.. ('.-'lis f,,i Tin,,]: ("link's Sent Him — Success of the Revolutionists — Plan of Iguala —
I lii Three Guarantees — The Empire — Downfall of Agustin I. — Rise of the Republic —
Bitter Disappointments of Governor Sola and the Friars — Disloyalty of the Mission
Friai R< fuse t<> Take the (kiili of Allegiance — Arguella, Governor — Advent of Foreign-
ers—Coming of the Hide Droghers — Indian Outbreak.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER X.

First Decade of Mexican Rule

Echeandia Governor — Make San Diego Hi? Capital— Padres of the Four Southern Mis-
sions Take the Oath of Allegiance to the Republic — Friars of the Northern Missions
Contumacious — Arrest of Padre Sarria — Expulsion of the Spaniards— Clandestine De-
parture of Padres Ripoll and Altimira — Exile of Padre Martinez — The Diputacion —
Queer Legislation — The Mexican Congress Attempts to Make California a Penal Colony —
Liberal Colonization Laws — Captain Jedediah S. Smith, the Pioneer of Overland Travel,
Arrives — Is Arrested — First White Man to Cross the Sierra Nevadas — Coming ot the
Fur Trappers — The Pattie Party — Imprisoned by Echeandia — Death of the Elder Pattie —
John Ohio Pattie's Bluster — Peg Leg Smith — Ewing Young — The Solis Revolution — A
Bloodless Battle — Echeandia's Mission Secularization Decree — He Is Hated by the Friar>
— Dios y Libertad — The Fitch Romance.

CHAPTER XI.

Revolutions — The Hijar Colonists

Victoria, Governor — His Unpopularity — Defeated by the Southern Revolutionists — Abdi-
cates and is Shipped out of the Country — Pio Pico, Governor — Echeandia, Governor of
Abajenos (Lowers) — Zamarano of the Arribanos (Uppers) — Dual Governors and a No
Man's Land — War Clouds — Los Angeles the Political Storm Center — Figueroa Appointed
Gefe Politico — The Dual Governors Surrender — Figueroa the Right Man in the Place —
Hijar's Colonization Scheme — Padres, the Promoter — Hijar to be Gefe Politico — A Fa-
mous Ride — A Cobbler Heads a Revolution — Hijar and Padres Arrested and Deported —
Disastrous End of the Compania Cosmopolitana — Death of Figueroa.

CHAPTER XII.

The Decline and Fall of the Missions

Sentiment vs. History— The F riars Right to the Mission Lands Only That of Occupa-
tion— Governor Borica's Opinion of the Mission System — Title to the Mission Domains —
Viceroy Bucarili's Instructions — Secularization — Decree of the Spanish Cortes in 1813 —
Mission Land Monopoly— No Land for Settlers — Secularization Plans, Decrees and Regla-
mentos — No Attempt to Educate the Neophytes — Destruction o! Mission Property.
Ruthless Slaughter of Cattle — Emancipation in Theory and in Practice — Depravity ot the
Neophytes — What Did Six Decades of Mission Rule Accomplish?— What Became of the
Mission Estates — The Passing of the Neophytes.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Free and Sovereign State of Alta California

Castro, Gefe Politico — Nicolas Gutierrez, Comandante and Political Chief— Chico, "Gober-
nador Propritario" — Makes Himself Unpopular — His Hatred of Foreigners — Makes
Trouble Wherever He Goes— Shipped Back to Mexico— Gutierrez Again Political Chief-
Centralism His Nemesis — Revolt of Castro and Alvarado — Gutierrez Besieged — Surrendci s
and Leaves the Country — Declaration of California's Independence — El Estado Libre y
Soberano de La Alta California — Alvarado Declared Governor— The Ship of State

CONTENTS.

/ aunched-Encounters a Storm-The South Opposes California s Independence-Los An-
.., |, s M lde a City and the Capital of the Territory by the Mexican Congress-The Capital
nv,estion the Cause of Opposition-War Between the North and South-Battle of San
Buenaventura-Los Angeles Captured-Peace in the Free State-Carlos Carr.llo Gov-
ernor of the South-War Again-Defeat of Carrillo at Las Flores-Peace-Alvarado
Appointed Governor by the Supreme Government— Release of Alvarado's Prisoners of
State— Exit the Free State.

CHAPTER XIV.

Decline and Fall or Mexican Domination

Hijos del Pais in Power— The Capital Question— The Foreigners Becoming a Menace—
Graham Affair— Micheltorena Appointed Governor— His Cholo Army— Commodore Jones
Captures Monterey — The Governor and the Commodore Meet at Los Angeles— Extrava-
gant Demands of Micheltorena— Revolt Against Micheltorena and His Army of Chicken
Thieves— Sutter and Graham Join Forces with Micheltorena— The Picos Unite with
Alvarado *.nd Castro— Battle of Cahuenga— Micheltorena and His Cholos Deported— Pico,
Governor— Castro Rebellious— The Old Feud Between the North and the South— Los
Angeles the Capital— Plots and Counter-Plots— Pico Made Governor by President Herrera
—Immigration from the United States.

CHAPTER XV.

Municipal Government — Homes and Home Life of the Californians

Tlie "Muy Ilustre Ayuntamiento," or Municipal Council — Its Unlimited Power, Queer Cus-
toms and Quaint Usages — Blue Laws — How Office Sought the Man and Caught Him —
Architecture of the Mission Age Not Aesthetic — Dress of the Better Class — Undress of
the Neophyte and the Peon — Fashions That Changed but Once in Fifty Years — Filial
Respect — Honor Thy Father and Mother — Economy in Government — When Men's Pleas-
ures and Vices Paid the Cost of Governing — No Fire Department — No Paid Police — No
Taxes.

^8 ^8

CHAPTER XVI.

Territorial Expansion by Conquest

The Mix nan War — More Slave Territory Needed — Hostilities Begun in Texas — Trouble
Brewing in California — Fremont at Monterey — Fremont and Castro Quarrel — Fremont
and Hi- Men Depart — Arrival of Lieutenant Gillespie — Follows Fremont — Fremont's Re-
turn—The Bear Flag Revolt — Seizure of Sonoma — A Short-Lived Republic — Commodore
Sloat Seizes California — Castro's Army Retreats Southward — Meets Pico's Advancing
Northward— Retreat to Los Angeles— Stockton and Fremont Invade the South — Pico and
Castro Vainly Attempt to Arouse the People— Pico's Humane Proclamation — Flight of
Pico and Castro— Stockton Captures Los Angeles — Issues a Proclamation — Some His-
torical Myths— The First Newspaper Published in California.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVII.

PACK

Revolt of the Californians 125

Stockton Returns to His Ship and Fremont Leaves for the North — Captain Gillespie,
Comandante, in the South — Attempts Reforms — Californians Rebei — The Americans Be-
sieged on Fort Hill — Juan Flaca's Famous Ride — Battle of Chino — Wilson's Company
Prisoners — Americans Agree to Evacute Los Angeles — Retreat to San Pedro — Cannon
Thrown into the Bay — Flores in Command of the Californians.

t$ d$8

CHAPTER XVIII.

Defeat and Retreat of Mervine's Men i2(,

Mervine, in Command of the Savannah, Arrives at San Pedro — Landing of the Troops —
Mervine and Gillespie Unite Their Forces — On to Los Angeles — Duvall's Log Book — An
Authentic Account of the March, Battle and Retreat — Names of the Killed and Wounded —
Burial of the Dead on Dead Man's Island — Names of the Commanding Officers — Flores
the Last Gefe Politico and Comandante-General — Jealousy of the Hijos del Pais — Hard
Times in the Old Pueblo.

CHAPTER XIX.

Final Conquest of California 1*3

Affairs in the North — Fremont's Battalion — Battle of Natividad — Bloodless Battle of Santa
Clara — End of the War in the North— Stockton at San Pedro — Carrillo's Strategy — A Re-
markable Battle — Stockton Arrives at San Diego — Building of a Fort — Raid on the
Ranchos — The Flag Episode — General Kearny Arrives at Warner's Pass — Battle of San
Pasqual — Defeat of Kearny — Heavy Loss — Relief Sent Him from San Diego — Preparing
for the Capture of Los Angeles — The March — Battle of Paso de Bartolo — Battle of La
Mesa — Small Losses — American Names of These Battles Misnomers.

CHAPTER XX.

Capture and Occupation of the Capital 141

Surrender of Los Angeles — March of the Victors — The Last Volley — A Chilly Recep-
tion— A Famous Scold — On the Plaza — Stockton's Headquarters — Emory's Fort — Fre-
mont's Battalion at San Fernando — The Flight of Flores — Negotiations with General Pico —
Treaty of Cahuenga — Its Importance — Fremont's Battalion Enters the City — Fremont.
Governor — Quarrel Between Kearny and Stockton — Kearny Departs for San Diego and
Stockton's Men for San Pedro.

CHAPTER XXI.

Transition and Transformation 144

Colonel Fremont in Command at Los Angeles — The Mormon Battalion — Its Arrival at
San Luis Rey, Sent to Los Angeles — General Kearny Governor at Monterey — Rival
Governors — Col. R. B. Mason, Inspector of the Troops in California — He Quarrels with
Fremont — Fremont Challenges Him — Colonel Cooke Made Commander of the Military

CONTENTS.

District of the South— Fremont's Battalion Mustered Out— Fremont Ordered to Report
to Kearny— Returns to the States with Kearny— Placed Under Arrest— Court-Martialed
—Found Guilty— Pardoned by the President— Rumors of a Mexican Invasion— Building
of a Fort— Col. J. B. Stevenson Commands in the Southern District— A Fourth of July
Celebration— The Fort Dedicated and Named Fort Moore— The New York Volunteers-
Company F, Third U. S. Artillery, Arrives— The Mormon Battalion Mustered Out—
Commodore Shubrick and General Kearny Jointly Issue a Proclamation to the People-
Col. R. B. Mason, Military Governor of California— A Policy of Conciliation— Varela,
Agitator and Revolutionist, Makes Trouble— Overland Immigration Under Mexican Rule—
The First Train— Dr. Marsh's Meanness— The Fate of the Donner Party.

1*7^ v£

CHAPTER XXII.

Mexican Laws and American Officials

Richard A. Mason, Commander of the Military Forces and Civil Governor of California —
Civil and Military Laws — The First Trial by Jury — Americanizing the People — Perverse
Electors and Contumacious Councilmen — Absolute Alcaldes — Nash at Sonoma and Bill
Blackburn at Santa Cruz — Queer Decisions — El Canon Perdido of Santa Barbara — Ex-
Governor Pio Pico Returns — Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo — Peace Proclaimed — The
News Reaches California — Country Acquired by the Treaty — The Volunteers Mustered
Out.

tv^ x$

CHAPTER XXIII.

Gold! Gold! Gold!

Traditions of Early Gold Discoveries in California — The First Authenticated Discovery —
Marshall's Discovery at Coloma — Disputed Dates and Conflicting Stories About the
Discovery — Sutter's Account — James W. Marshall — His Story — The News Travels Slowly —
First Newspaper Report — The Rush Begins — San Francisco Deserted — The Star and the
California!! Suspend Publication — The News Spreads — Sonorian Migration — Oregonians
Come— The News Reaches the States— A Tea Caddy Full of Gold at the War Office,
Washington— Seeing Is Believing — Gold Hunters Come by Land and Sea — The Pacific
Mai! Steamship Company— Magical Growth of San Francisco — The Dry Diggings— Some
Remarkable Yields— Forty Dollars for a Butcher Knife— Extent of the Gold Fields.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Making a State

Bennett Riley, Governor— Unsatisfactory Form of Government— Semi-Civil and Semi-Mil-
itarj Congress Does Nothing— The Slave-Holding Faction Prevents Action— Growing
Dissati faction— Call for Convention— Constitution Making— The Great Seal— Election of
State Officers— Peter H. Burnett, Governor— Inauguration of a State Government— The
First 1 egislature— A Self-Constituted State— The Pro-Slavery Faction in Congress— Op-
pose the Admission of California— Defeat of the Obstructionists— California Admitted into
the Union— Great Rejoicing— A Magnificent Procession— California Full Grown at Birth—
The Capital Question— San Jose Loses the Capital— Vallej o Wins — Goes to Sacramento —
G mes to Benicia— Capital Question in the Courts— Sacramento Wins— Capitol Building
Begun in t86o— Completed in i86q.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXV.

PAGE

The Argonauts 169

Who First Called Them Argonauts — How They Came and From Where They Came —
Extent of the Gold Fields — Mining Appliances — Bateas, Gold Pans, Rockers, Long Toms,
Sluices — Useless Machines and Worthless Inventions — Some Famous Gold Rushes — Gold
Lake — Gold Bluffs — Kern River — Frazer River — Washoe — Ho for Idaho! — Social Level-
ing— Capacity for Physical Labor the Standard — Independency and Honesty of the Argo-
nauts.

CHAPTER XXVI.

San Francisco 175

The First House — A Famous Fourth of July Celebration — The Enterprise of Jacob P. Lcesc
— General Kearny's Decree for the Sale of Water Lots — Alcalde Bartlett Changes the
Name of the Town from Yerba Buena to San Francisco — Hostility of the Star to the
Change — Great Sale of Lots in the City of Francisca, now Benicia — Its Boom Bursts —
Population of San Francisco September 4, 1847 — Vocations of Its Inhabitants — Population
March, 1848 — Vioget's Survey — O'Farrell's Survey — Wharves — The First School House—
The Gold Discovery Depopulates the City — Reaction — Rapid Growth — Description of the
City in April, 1850 — Great Increase in Population — How the People Lived and Labored —
Enormous Rents — High Priced Real Estate — Awful Streets — Flour Sacks, Cooking Stove
and Tobacco Box Sidewalk — Ships for Houses — The Six Great Fires — The Boom of 1853 —
The Burst of 1855— Harry Meigs — Steady Growth of the City.

t£

CHAPTER XXVII.

Crime, Criminals and Vigilance Committees 182

But Little Crime in California Under Spanish and Mexican Rule — The First Vigilance
Committee of .California — The United Defenders of Public Safety — Execution of Alispaz
and Maria del Rosario Villa — Advent of the Criminal Element — Criminal Element in the
Ascendency — Incendiarism, Theft and Murder — The San Francisco Vigilance Committee
of 1851 — Hanging of Jenkins — A Case of Mistaken Identity — Burdue for Stuart — Arrest,
Trial and Hanging of Stuart — Hanging of Whittaker and McKenzie — The Committee
Adjourns but Does Not Disband — Its Work Approved — Corrupt Officials — James King
of William Attacks Political Corruption in the Bulletin — Richardson killed by Cora —
Scathing Editorials — Murders and Thefts — Attempts to Silence King — King Exposes
James P. Casey's State's Prison Record — Cowardly Assassination of King by Casey —
Organi2ation of the Vigilance Committee of 1856 — Fatal Mistake of the Herald — Casey
and Cora in the Hands of the Committee — Death of King — Hanging of Casey and Cora —
Other Executions- — Law and Order Party — Terry and His Chivalrous Friends — They Are
Glad to Subside — Black List and Deportations — The Augean Stable Cleaned — The Com-
mittee's Grand Parade — Vigilance Committees in Los Angeles — Joaquin Murrieta and His
Banditti — Tiburcio Vasquez and His Gang.

St & &

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Filibusters and Filibustering 193

The Origin of Filibustering in California — Raousset-Boulbon's Futile Schemes — His Ex-
ecration— William Walker — His Career as a Doctor. Lawyer and Journalist — Recruits Fili-
busters— Lands at La Paz — His Infamous Conduct in Lower California — Failure of His

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Scheme— A Farcical Trial— Lionized in San Francisco— His Operations in Nicaragua—
Battles— Decrees Slavery in Nicaragua— Driven Out of Nicaragua— Tries Again— Is Cap-
in,, ,1 ;m.l Shot— Crabb and His Unfortunate Expedition— Massacre of the Misguided
Adventurers— Filibustering Ends When Secession Begins.

(,$8

CHAPTER XXIX.

Fuom Gold to Grain and Fruits.

199

Mexican Farming — But Little Fruit and Few Vegetables — Crude Farming Implements —
The Agricultural Capabilities of California Underestimated — Wheat the Staple in Central
California— Cattle in the South— Gold in the North — Big Profits in Grapes — Orange Culture
Begun in the South — Apples, Peaches, Pears and Plums — The Sheep Industry — The Famine
Years of 1S63 and 1S64 Bring Disaster to the Cattle Kings of the South — The Doom of
Their Dynasty — Improvement of Domestic Animals — Exit the Mustang — Agricultural Col-
onies.

t>$^

CHAPTER XXX.

Civil War — Loyalty and Disloyalty

204

State Division and What Became of It — Broderick's Early Life — Arrival in California-
Enters the Political Arena — Gwin and Broderick — Duel Between Terry and Broderick-
Death of Broderick — Gwin-Latham Combination — Firing on Fort Sumter — State Loyal-
1 reasonable Utterance — A Pacific Republic — Disloyalty Rampant in Southern California-
Union Sentiments Triumphant — Confederate Sympathizers Silenced.

i.*^

CHAPTER XXXI.

Trade, Travel and Transportation 21 1

Spanish Trade— Fixed Prices— No Cornering the Market— Mexico's Methods of Trade—
The Hide Droghers — Trade — Ocean Commerce and Travel — Overland Routes — Overland
Stage Routes — Inland Commerce — The Pony Express — Stage Lines — Pack Trains — Camel
Caravans — The Telegraph and the Railroad — Express Companies.

t$ t$ t$

CHAPTER XXXII.

Railroads

I arl> Agitation of the Pacific Railroad Scheme— The Pacific Railroad in Politics— Northern
l mt< and Southern Routes— First Railroad in California— Pacific Railroad Bills in Con-
A Decade of Agitation and No Road— The Central and Union Pacific Railroads—
\ 1 ..1 [862 Subsidies— The Southern Pacific Railroad System— Its Incorporation and
Charter— Its Growth and Development— The Santa Fe System— Other Railroads.

218

CONTENTS. 27
CHAPTER XXXIII.

PAGE

The Indian Question 223

Treatment of the Indians by Spain and Mexico — A Conquista — Unsanitary Condition of
the Mission Villages — The Mission Neophyte and What Became of Him — Wanton Out-
rages on the savages — Some So-Called Indian Wars — Extermination of the Aborigines
— Indian Island Massacre — The Mountaineer Battalion — The Two Years' War — The
Modoc War.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Some Political History 229

Advent of the Chinese — Kindly Received at First — Given a Public Reception — The
"China Boys" Become Too Many — Agitation and Legislation Against Them — Dennis
Kearney and the Sand Lot Agitation — Kearney's Slogan, "The Chinese Must Go" —
Hew Kearney Went — The New Constitution — A Mixed Convention — Opposition to the
Constitution — The Constitution Adopted — Defeat of the Workingmen's Party — A New
Treaty with China — Governors of California, Spanish, Mexican and American.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Education and Educational Institutions 235

Public Schools in the Spanish Era — Schools of the Mexican Period — No Schools for the
Neophytes — Early American Schools — First School Flouse in San Francisco — The First
American Teacher — The First School Law — A Grand School System — University of the
Pacific — College of California — University of California — Stanford University — Normal
Schools.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Cities of California — Their Origin and Growth 242

The Spaniards and Mexicans Not Town Builders — Francisca, on the Straits of Car-
quinez, the First American City — Its Brilliant Prospects and Dismal Failure — San
Francisco — Its Population and Expansion — The Earthquake of April 18, 1906 — The
Great Fire that Followed the Earthquake — The Effects of the Earthquake at Oakland.
Alameda, Berkeley, San Jose, Santa Rosa and Other Points Around the Bay of San
Francisco — Los Angeles, the Only City in California Before the Conquest — Popula-
tion and Development — Oakland, Its Growth and Progress — Berkeley — Alameda —
Sacramento, the Metropolis of the Mines — San Jose, the Garden City — Stockton, the
Entrepot of the Southern Mines — San Diego, the Oldest City — Fresno — Vallejo —
Nevada Citv — Grass V alley — Eureka — Marysville — Redding — Pasadena — Pomona — San
Bernardino — Riverside.

INDEX.

Abrott, Andrew 830

Adams, Edson 426

Alden, Henry E 695

Aldrich, William 473

Alexander, John H. C 781

Arper, George W 784

Ashby, Mark T 811

Ayer, Henry 620

Babbitt, Salmon M 521

Baccus, William J 726

Bachelder, Thomas F 461

Bakewell, John 638

Bangle, Edward 567

Barber, Arthur A 808

Barker, James L 479

Barnes, Douglas G 529

Barrett, William G 354

Barstow, Anson 741

Barstow, David P 517

Bartlett, William C 347

Bates, Charles D 403

Bayles, William H 470

Bell, Harmon 281

Bell, Harry D., M. D 732

Bell, Robert 855

Bell, Samuel B 275

Bemis, Charles C 815

Benner, Frederic M 473

Benton, John E 823

Benton, Julian J., M. D 545

Bergsten, Oscar P 836

Bilger, Frank W 310

Bixby, Levi S 456

Blake, Charles T 646

Blethen, James E 853

Boehmer, Fritz 577

Bon, John B 613

Boone, Philip R 833

Bradley, John T 373

Braun, N. H 782

Brayton, Albert P 644

Brett, George W 462

Brewer, John H 539

Briare, Richard M 499

Brickell, Henry S 414

Broad, Charles A 649

Brock, Eugene L 683

Brock, Joseph M 794

Brown, Leonard D 524

Brown, Robert 708

Browne, J. Ross 396

Browne, Spencer C 396

Bryant, Major Cullen 568

Bush, George T 785

Bush, Henry 596

Button, Fred L 552

Campbell, Frederick M 383

Canalizo, Eugene A 853

Carey, Philip M 314

Carleton, Henry E 774

Carr, John M 856

Carroll, John W 849

Chabot, Anthony 798

Chandler, Augustus L 847

Chapman, Isaac N 857

Chase, George 449

Chase, Quincy A 651

Christensen, Peter 832

Church, Augustus M 597

Clark, A. V 545

Clark, Galen 415

Clay, Clement C 760

Clay, I. Harrison 807

Cluness, William R 510

Coe, John T 683

Colby, Amasa D 622

Corder, Thomas W 721

Craig, Hugh 824

Crane, William W 323

Crovvell, Clarence 53°

Crown, Wesley M 765

Cruickshank, James 854

Cuff, Thomas 278

Curdts, Carl E., M. D 643

Currlin, Albert 779

Curry, Bert 848

Curtz. Peter 475

Cutting, Francis 670

Dalton, Henry P 349

Davis, Robert H 829

d'Azevcdo, Joseph L 802

DeGolia, Darwin 361

DeGolia, George E 645

DeLaguna, Alexander L 673

De La Montanya, Mathew 787

Dclger, Frederick 827

deMenezes, Joaquin B 838

Deming, Mrs. Sarah W 353

Denison, Eli S 709

Dietz, Alfred C 573

Dieves, Joseph 729

Dille, Jefferson T 309

Dimond, Hugh 835

Dimpfel, Col. G. H. A 504

Dinneen, E 674

Dixon, Robert V 278

Dohrmann, John H 469

Downing, Theodore H 678

Dreisbach, Frank M 79'

Dunning, Eli B 682

Dusinbury, Myron T 457

Dwindle, John W 467

Earl, Guy C 79©

Edwards, Henry 826

Kdwards, Moroni 688

Emery, Joseph S 626

Ench, Frank 527

Ernst, George 758

Everhart, Harold 634

Farrier, Hiram L 656

Farwell, Frederick M 661

Ferrier, Francis 35°

Ferson, Horace D 44^

Finch, Duncan B 671

Fine, Henry M, M. D 665

Finkeldey, Henry 476

Fisher. Philip M 336

Fitzgerald, George 849

Flick. George W 533

INDEX.

Flint. Edward P 589

Fluno, Francis J 341

Folger, James A 825

Forbes, James A 425

Ford, Alvin 698

Foss. Fred W 793

Fountain, George W 814

Fowler, James E 355

Frear, Rev. Walter 816

Freeman, Eugene M 728

Frick, George W 384

Gage, David 7°6

Gage. Stephen T 696

Galindo, R. Peralta 855

Gamble, John 590

Gamble, John C 323

Gardiner, James T 731

Garrard, Edward J 745

Garthwaite, Harry 728

Gee, Edgar F 481

Gel wicks, Daniel W 747

Ghirardelli, Joseph N 449

Gibbs, William T 745

Gibson, Judge E. M 694

Gilcrest, Frank M 373

Gilcrcst, John 636

Gilcrest, Samuel F 372

Gill, John J 374

Gilstrap, James M 841

Goddard, Elnathan B 770

Goldsby, Z. N 657

Gorrill, Charles H 731

Graham, Frank H 730

Grant, George E 792

Green, Adam T 780

Green, Samuel S 428

Gregory, Adolf 539

Gregory, William 756

Grindley, John H 762

Grondona, Domingo 836

Gunn, Charles T 777

Hagar, Edward C 726

Hahn, Emil C 641

Haines, Charles W 649

Haines, Ellis A 754

Hall, Francis T 765

Hallahan, George D 801

Hallett. Charles 0 668

llallidic, Andrew S 485

Hamilton, William H. H 634

Hamlin, Adrian R 639

llampel, John 724

Hanifin, Jeremiah J 632

Hardy, William B 458

Harmon, Edward D 395

Harmon, John B 389

Harris, David D 343

Harris, Norman A 452

Harrub, Walter B 407

Harvey, Benjamin P 488

Hayes, Hon. Henry 506

Hays, Col. John C 700

Head, Miss Anna 663

Hector, Robert, M. D 672

Heimbold, Frederick J 626

Henderson, D. A 499

Hendricks, William H 614

Heron, Ernest A 329

Hersey, Amos 622

Heywood, Charles D 463

Hill, John C 630

Hilton, William H 360

Hinckley, Daniel B 844

Hoag, Joseph W 636

Hodge, J. R 832

Hoffmann, Powell R 512

Hogan, Hugh 797

Hogan, Hugh W 803

Hogan, Thomas P 843

Holcomb, Harry L 846

Hollywood, Andrew 511

Hook, Elijah 404

Hooper, Calvin L 675

Hostetter, Frank 830

Houghton, Frederick T 294

Houghton, Nancy J 294

Howard, Asa 761

Howe, Horace L. P 857

Howell, George W 653

Huff, Socrates 379

Hunter, David B 803

Hyde, Orra C, M. D 59b

Irish, Stephen L 559

Jackson, F. F., M. D 365

Jeffress, James V 775

Johnson, J. J 738

Johnson, Perry 753

Jones, Leon M 574

Jordan, Fred A 723

Jordan, John B 746

Joyce, James A 848

Jungck, D. L 791

Jurgens, Charles 716

Kales, Martin W 445

Karman, Andrew 1 616

Katzenberg, Frank J 800

Kellogg, Martin 659

Kelly, Alexander S., M. D 541

Kelly, James F 802

Kendall, James H 613

Kern, Rodrigo E. J 789

Klinkner, Charles A 640

Klinkner, Charles A., Jr 842

Knight, William H 642

Knowland, Joseph 615

Knowland, Joseph R 566

Knowles, William E 670

Knox, Charles H 697

Konigshofer, J. J 802

Krause, Frederick L 842

Krauth, Frederick K 493

Lamoureux, Philias H 681

Larkey, A. S., M. D 492

Larue, Judge James 604

Lathrop, Solomon 676

Laughland, John 648

Lawrence, Capt. William H... 759

Laymance, Millard J 839

Leach, William 690

LeBallister, Thomas W 763

LeConte, John 610

Le Conte, Joseph 667

Lee, Charles F 557

Lee, George H 551

Leimert, Louis 730

Lemmon, John G 834

Lewis, Irving C 817

Liese, Conrad 512

Lindley, Morton 752

Lindley, Thomas M 602

Lin foot, James 386

Linforth, James 515

Little, James R 782

Lloyd, Charles E 757

Logan, Walter E 82T

Long, Gen. Oscar F 603

Loring, Williston A 772

Lowell, Nathan R 572

Luning, Nicholas 359

Luning, Oscar T 359

Luth, John 788

Lynch, Peter B 573

Lyon, John L 805

McAdam, Alexander 692

McClintock, Joseph 769

McDonald, Charles 409

McDonald, William 554

McDonnell, Patrick 804

McElrath, John E 727

McGrew, Patterson H 751

McKeon, Neal J 718

McLean, John K 585

McMullen, Duncan 804

McQuarrie, Daniel J 705

McShane, James S 837

McVey, John L 714

Macdonald, John H 589

Maloon, Benjamin 583

Maloon, Benjamin F ,. 813

Maloon, Seth B 681

Marchand, Frank X. Z 755

Marsellis, Ford. 720

Marsh, John 668

Marston, Erastus W 592

Marston, William H 419

Maslin, Edwin W 397

Mayborn, Charles G 558

Mayon, Thomas C 711

Mecartney, Amos 497

Medau, John H 560

Meese, Edwin 438

Meese, Hermann 715

Meese, Walter 438

Melvin, Judge Henry A 653

Mendenhall, William M 413

Merriam, William P 754

Merrill, Clarence S 789

Merritt, James B 455

Miller, George 711

Miller, Henry R 542

Miller, J. Y 840

Mills, Philo 781

Minney, David F 688

Minney, M. T 693

Mitchell, Frank D 368

Mitchell, James S 742

Mitchell, John 837

Mitchell, William A 666

Moffitt, Francis J 591

Moffitt, James 719

Montagne, Augustus A 840

Montgomery, James M 770

Montgomery, Richard J 73<J

Montgomery, Zachariah 733

Morgan, Thomas W 432

Morrill, Simeon F 516

Morris, George T 807

Morse, Henry N 300

Mortimer, Walter J 717

Morton, Sargent S 34 1

Mott, Hon. Frank K 621

INDEX.

Muhr, Herman 722

Myers, J. S 707

Nash, John A 796

Naylor, Addison W 518

Naylor, Frank L 552

Nedderman, Henry 827

Nelson, Capt. Charles 377

Newland, Edward 740

Nixon, Robert B 470

Northey, Vernal S 749

Nosier, Thomas M _j8o

Nystrom, John R 80 j

Olcese, Andrew 503

Pacific Coast Canning Co 527

Pardee, Enoch H., M. D 319

Pardee, Hon. George C 320

Parke, Robert 800

Perkins, George C 303

Perreau, Howard J 843

Phillips, James 766

Phillips, John W 744

Pinkerton, Thomas H 811

Plaut, Carl S 725

Pleitner, Henry A 819

Plummer, Marshall D 533

Poole, Henry C 7^8

Porter, William S., M. D 708

Powell, Abraham 809

Pratt, Daniel W 451

Probst, Ernest J 724

Pulcifer, Harry W 421

Putnam, Royal P 367

Putnam, William P 651

Rackliffe, John 750

Randall, Comley H 541

Rankin, James 687

Rawson, Melville L 716

Redding, David W 422

Reed, Capt. Charles E. H 692

Reed, Charles G 443

Reed, George W 437

Reed, William 431

Remillard, Edward 468

Remillard, Helaire 748

Requa. Isaac L 297

Reynolds, J. F 722

■Rhoda, Albert 799

Rhoda. Frederick 767

Richards, John W 487

iii

Robins, George 601

Robins, John H 601

Robinson, Thomas M 851

Robinson, Jesse, M. D 845

Rodolph, George W 684

Rogers, Phillip ~-x

Rollins, Franklin 743

Rosborough, Alexander M 380

Roulstone, Andrew J 850

Roundey, John L 637

Russ, Adolphus G 283

Russ, Christian 283

Russ, Henry B 284

Sagehoin, William T 723

Sanborn, John 371

Sandford, Arthur C 548

Schnebly, Henry W 710

Scotchler, Joseph L 799

Scott, John C 598

Sessions, Edward C 500

Shanklin, James \\ 647

Sharpe. F. Willis 481

Sharrcr, George W 772

Shattuck, Francis K 390

Shaw, A. E 674

Sherman, David S 787

Sherman, George E 633

Shorey, Albert 475

Shuey, John 330

Sill, Edward R 856

Simmons, Orrin 523

Simpson, William 619

Slater, Capt. John 509

Sleeper, George E 718

Smiiie, Robert 793

Smith, Edward A 714

Smith. Edward J 691

Smith, Frank M 660

Smith, Mortimer 548

Sohst, John F. W 434

Soule, Frank 675

Soule, Hon. Franklin 659

Spear, Charles H 852

Squires, John 816

Staats, John C 506

Stachler, Eugene 686

Stachler, John J 494

Stearns, Edwin 546

Steele, E. L. G 851

Steere, Thomas F 482

Steffanoni. Achille 595

Steffens. Deitrick 492

Stewart. Michael Y 764

Stoakes. Benjamin F 491

Stocker, Abner H 677

INDEX.

Stout. John C, M. D 444

Sunol, Don Antonio 365

Sunol, Joseph D 655

Symmes, David 822

Taylor, Martin V 776

Thayer, Edward F 584

Thayer. Ignatius E 685

Thomas, Charles E 474

Thomas. William D 680

Thomas, Capt. W. R 522

Thompson, Thomas J 737

Thomson, Peter 317

Thrasher, William T 565

Todd, William P 761

Treacy, Patrick W 786

Tregloan, John R 795

Tubbs. Hiram 534

rum Suden. Henry 679

Tyrrel, Jeremiah 773

Ullner, William 677

Underwood, Byron E 812

Vallejo, Gen. J. J 831

Van Arman, Hon. Hiram M.. 820

Van Court, Eugene S 439

Van Court, John W 326

Vane, James F 778

Vogel, Jacob 768

Vose, George H 313

Vose, George H., Jr 314

Wakefield, Leland H 68y

Walker, George M 536

Walker, Wilber 463

Wall, Gen. Joseph G 335

Warner, Franklin 347

Waste, William H 440

Waterman, Sylvanus D 282

Watson, B. A. C 709

Webber, Mrs. Mary H 720

Welcker, William T 608

Wellman, Bela 713

Westall, Joseph 547

Wetherbee, Henry 401

Wetmore, Clarence J 505

Wetmore, Jesse L 332

Wetmore, William P 571

Wheeland, Capt. Samuel 833

Wheeler, Benjamin 1 338

Wheeler, Peter L., M. D 796

Whitehead, Rupert 798

Whitley, John H 801

Whitney, Frederick E 427

Whitney, George E 664

Wilcox, Wilbur J 498

Willcutt, Joseph L 287

Will iams, Walter S 420

Williamson, Luther M 712

Winsor, Serrill W 528

Woodward, Miss N. Z 625

Woolley, John 607

Woolsey, Walter P 818

Wright, Capt. John T 786

Wright, Jonathan G 699

Wurts, M. L 553

Young, George B 739

CALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER I.

SPANISH EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES.

FOR centuries there had been a vague tra-
dition of a land lying somewhere in the
seemingly limitless expanse of ocean
stretching westward from the shores of Europe.
The poetical fancy of the Greeks had located in
it the Garden of Hesperides, where grew the
Golden Apples. The myths and superstitions of
the middle ages had peopled it with gorgons
and demons and made it the abode of lost souls.

When Columbus proved the existence of a
new world beyond the Atlantic, his discovery
did not altogether dispel the mysteries and su-
perstitions that for ages had enshrouded the
fabled Atlantis, the lost continent of the Hesperi-
des. Romance and credulity had much to do
with hastening the exploration of the newly dis-
covered western world. Its interior might hold
wonderful possibilities for wealth, fame and con-
quest to the adventurers who should penetrate
its dark unknown. The dimly told traditions of
the natives were translated to fit the cupidity or
the credulity of adventurers, and sometimes
served to promote enterprises that produced re-
sults far different from those originally intended.

The fabled fountain of youth lured Ponce
de Leon over many a league in the wilds of
Florida ; and although he found no spring spout-
ing forth the elixir of life, he explored a rich
and fertile country, in which the Spaniards
planted the first settlement ever made within the
territory now held by the United States. The
legend of El Dorado, the gilded man of the
golden lake, stimulated adventurers to brave the
horrors of the miasmatic forests of the Amazon
and the Orinoco; and the search for that gold-

covered hombre hastened, perhaps, by a hun-
dred years, the exploration of the tropical re-
gions of South America. Although the myth of
Ouivira that sent Coronado wandering over des-
ert, mountain and plain, far into the interior of
North America, and his quest for the seven cities
of Cibola, that a romancing monk, Marcos de
Niza, "led by the Holy Ghost," imagined he
saw in the wilds of Pimeria, brought neither
wealth nor pride of conquest to that adventur-
ous explorer, yet these myths were the indirect
cause of giving to the world an early knowledge
of the vast regions to the north of Mexico.

When Cortes' lieutenant, Gonzalo de Sando-
val, gave his superior officer an account of a
wonderful island ten days westward from the
Pacific coast of Mexico, inhabited by women
only, and exceedingly rich in pearls and gold,
although he no doubt derived his story from
Montalvo's romance, "The Sereas of Esplan-
dian," a popular novel of that day, yet Cortes
seems to have given credence to his subordi-
nate's tale, and kept in view the conquest of the
island.

To the energy, the enterprise and the genius
of Hernan Cortes is due the early exploration
of the northwest coast of North America. In
1522, eighty-five years before the English
planted their first colony in America, and nearly
a century before the landing of the Pilgrims on
Plymouth rock, Cortes had established a ship-
yard at Zacatula, the most northern port on the
Pacific coast of the country that he had just
conquered. Here he intended to build ships to
explore the upper coast of the South Sea ("as

34 HISTORICAL AND BI

the Pacific Ocean was then called), but his good
fortune, that had hitherto given success to his
undertakings, seemed to have deserted him, and
disaster followed disaster. His warehouse,
filled with material for shipbuilding, that with
great labor and expense had been packed on
muleback from Vera Cruz, took fire and all was
destroyed. It required years to accumulate an-
other supply. He finally, in 1527. succeeded in
launching four ships. Three of these were taken
possession of by the king's orders for service in
the East Indies. The fourth and the smallest
made a short voyage up the coast. The com-
mander, Maldonado, returned with glowing re-
ports of a rich country he had discovered. He
imagined he had seen evidence of the existence
of gold and silver, but he brought none with
him.

In 152S Cortes was unjustly deprived of the
government of the country he had conquered.
His successor, Nuno de Guzman, president of
the royal audiencia, as the new form of gov-
ernment for New Spain (Mexico) was called, had
pursued him for years with the malignity of a
demon. Cortes returned to Spain to defend
himself against the rancorous and malignant
charges of his enemies. He was received at
court with a show of high honors, but which in
real it v were hollow professions of friendship
and insincere expressions of esteem. He was
rewarded by the bestowal of an empty title. He
was empowered to conquer and colonize coun-
tries at his own expense, for which he was to
receive the twelfth part of the revenue. Cortes
returned to Mexico and in 1532 he had two ships
fitted out, which sailed from Acapulco, in June
of that year, up the coast of Jalisco. Portions
of the crews of each vessel mutinied. The mu-
tineers were put aboard of the vessel com-
manded by Mazuela and the other vessels, com-
manded by Hurtardo, continued the voyage as
far as the Yaqui country. Here, having landed
in search of provisions, the natives massacred
the commander and all the crew. The crew of
tin' other vessel shared the same fate lower
down the coast. The stranded vessel was after-
wards plundered and dismantled by Nuno de
Guzman, who was about as much of a savage as
the predatory and murderous natives.

GRAPHICAL RECORD.

In 1533 Cortes, undismayed by his disasters,,
fitted out two more ships for the exploration
of the northern coast of Mexico. On board one
of these ships, commanded by Bercerra de Men-
doza, the crew, headed by the chief pilot, Jim-
inez, mutinied. Mendoza was killed and all
who would not join the mutineers were forced
to go ashore on the coast of Jalisco. The muti-
neers, to escape punishment by the authorities,
under the command of the pilot, Fortuno Jim-
inez, sailed westerly away from the coast of
the main land. After several days' sailing out
of sight of land, they discovered what they sup-
posed to be an island. They landed at a place
now known as La Paz, Lower California. Here
Jiminez and twenty of his confederates were
killed by the Indians, or their fellow mutineers,,
it is uncertain which. The survivors of the ill-
fated expedition managed to navigate the vessel
back to Jalisco, where they reported the dis-
covery of an island rich in gold and pearls. This
fabrication doubtlessly saved their necks. There
is no record of their punishment for mutiny.
Cortes' other ship accomplished even less than
the one captured by the mutineers. Grixalvo,.
the commander of this vessel, discovered a des-
olate island, forty leagues south of Cape San
Lucas, which he named Santo Tomas. But the
discovery that should immortalize Grixalvo, and
place him in the category with the romancing
Monk, de Niza and Sandoval of the Amazonian
isle, was the seeing of a merman. It swam about
about the ship for a long time, playing antics
like a monkey for the amusement of the sailors,
washing its face with its hands, combing its hair
with its fingers; at last, frightened by a sea
bird, it disappeared.

Cortes, having heard of Jiminez's discovery,,
and possibly believing it to be Sandoval's isle
of the Amazons, rich with gold and pearls, set
about building more ships for exploration and
for the colonization of the island. He ordered
the building of three ships at Tehauntepec. The
royal audencia having failed to give him any
redress or protection against his enemy, Nuno
de Guzman, he determined to punish him him-
self. Collecting a considerable force of cava-
liers and soldiers, he marched to Chiametla.
There he found his vessel, La Concepcion, lying

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

:>,.-

on her beam ends, a wreck, and plundered of
everything of value. He failed to find Guzman,
that worthy having taken a hasty departure be-
fore his arrival. His ships having come up
from Tehauntepec, he embarked as many sol-
diers and settlers as his vessels would carry, and
sailed away for Jiminez's island. May 3, 1535,
he landed at the port where Jiminez and his fel-
low mutineers were killed, which he named
Santa Cruz. The colonists were landed on the
supposed island and the ships were sent back
to Chiametla for the remainder of the settlers.
His usual ill luck followed him. The vessels
became separated on the gulf in a storm and
the smaller of the three returned to Santa Cruz.
Embarking in it, Cortes set sail to find his miss-
ing ships. Tie found them at the port of Guaya-
bal, one loaded with provisions, the other dis-
mantled and run ashore. Its sailors had de-
serted and those of the other ship were about
to follow. Cortes stopped this, took command
of the vessels and had them repaired. When the
repairs were completed he set sail for his colony.
But misfortune followed him. His chief pilot
was killed by the falling of a spar when scarce
out of sight of land. Cortes took command of
the vessels himself. Then the ships encountered
a terrific storm that threatened their destruc-
tion. Finally they reached their destination,
Santa Cruz. There again misfortune awaited
him. The colonists could obtain no sustenance
from the barren soil of the desolate island.
Their provisions exhausted, some of them died
of starvation and the others killed themselves
by over-eating when relief came.

Cortes, finding the interior of the supposed
island as desolate and forbidding as the coast,
and the native inhabitants degraded and brutal
savages, without houses or clothing, living on
vermin, insects and the scant products of the
sterile land, determined to abandon his coloniza-
tion scheme. Gathering together the wretched
survivors of his colony, he embarked them on
his ships and in the early part of 1537 landed
them in the port of Acapulco.

At some time between 1535 and 1537 the
name California was applied to the supposed
island, but whether applied by Cortes to en-
courage his disappointed colonists, or whether

given by them in derision, is an unsettled ques-
tion. The name itself is derived from a Spanish
romance, the "Sergas de Esplandian," written
by Ordonez de Montalvo and published in Se-
ville, Spain, about the year 15 10. The passage
in which the name California occurs is as fol-
lows: "Know that on the right hand of the In-
dies there is an island called California, very near
the terrestrial paradise, which was peopled with
black women, without any men among them,
because they were accustomed to live after the
fashion of Amazons. They were of strong and
hardened bodies, of ardent courage and great
force. The island was the strongest in the
world from its steep rocks and great cliffs.
Their arms were all of gold and so were the
caparison of the wild beasts which they rode,
after having trained them, for in all the island
there is no other metal." The "steep rocks and
great cliffs'' of Jiminez's island may have sug-
gested to Cortes or to his colonists some fan-
cied resemblance to the California of Montalvo's
romance, but there was no other similarity.

For years Cortes had been fitting out ex-
peditions by land and sea to explore the un-
known regions northward of that portion of
Mexico which he had conquered, but disaster
after disaster had wrecked his hopes and im-
poverished his purse. The last expedition sent
out by him was one commanded by Francisco
Ulloa, who, in 1539, with two ships, sailed up
the Gulf of California, or Sea of Cortes, on the
Sonora side, to its head. Thence he proceeded
down the inner coast of Lower California to
the cape at its southern extremity, which he
doubled, and then sailed up the outer coast to
Cabo del Engano, the "Cape of Deceit." Fail-
ing to make any progress against the head
winds, April 5, 1540, the two ships parted com-
pany in a storm. The smaller one, the Santa
Agueda, returned safely to Santiago. The
larger, La Trinidad, after vainly endeavoring to
continue the voyage, turned back. The fate of
Ulloa and of the vessel too, is uncertain, One
authority says he was assassinated after reach-
ing the coast of Jalisco by one of his soldiers,
who, for some trivial cause, stabbed him to
death; another account says that nothing is
known of his fate, nor is it certainly known

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

whether his vessel ever returned. The only
thing accomplished by this voyage was to dem-
onstrate that Lower California was a peninsula.
Even this fact, although proved by Ulloa's voy-
age, was not fully admitted by geographers until
two centuries later.

In 1540 Cortes returned to Spain to obtain, if
possible, some recognition and recompense from
the kine for his valuable services. His declin-
ing years had been rilled with bitter disappoint-
ments. Shipwreck and mutiny at sea; disaster
and defeat to his forces on land; the treachery
of his subordinates and the jealousy of royal of-
ficials continually thwarted his plans and wasted
his substance. After expending nearly a million
dollars in explorations, conquests and attempts
at colonization, fretted and worried by the in-
difference and the ingratitude of a monarch for
whom he had sacrified so much, disappointed,
disheartened, impoverished, he died at an ob-
scure hamlet near Seville, Spain, in December,
1547-

The next exploration that had something to
do with the discovery of California was that of
Hernando de Alarcon. With two ships he sailed
from Acapulco, May 9, 1540, up the Gulf of Cal-
ifornia. His object was to co-operate with the
expedition of Coronado. Coronado, with an
army of four hundred men, had marched from
Culiacan, April 22, 1540, to conquer the seven
cities of Cibola. In the early part of 1537 Al-
varo Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three compan-
ions (the only survivors of six hundred men that
Panfilo de Narvaes, ten years before, had landed
in Florida for the conquest of that province)
after almost incredible sufferings and hardships
arrived in Culiacan on the Pacific coast. On
their long journey passing from one Indian tribe
to another they had seen many wondrous things
and had heard of many more. Among others
they had been told of seven great cities in a
country called Cibola that were rich in gold and
silver and precious stones.

A Franciscan friar, Marcos de Niza, having
heard their wonderful stories determined to find
the seven cities. Securing the service of
Estevanico, a negro slave, who was one of Ca-
beza de Vaca's party, he set out in quest of the
cities. With a number of Indian porters and

Estevanico as a guide, he traveled northward
a hundred leagues when he came to a desert
that took four days to cross. Beyond this he
found natives who told him of people four days
further away who had gold in abundance. He
sent the negro to investigate and that individual
sent back word that Cibola was yet thirty days'
journey to the northward. Following the trail
of his guide, Niza travelled for two weeks cross-
ing several deserts. The stories of the magnifi-
cence of the seven cities increased with every
tribe of Indians through whose country he
passed. At length, when almost to the prom-
ised land, a messenger brought the sad tidings
that Estevanico had been put to death with all
of his companions but two by the inhabitants of
Cibola. To go forward meant death to the
monk and all his party, but before turning back
he climbed a high mountain and looked down
upon the seven cities with their high houses and
teeming populations thronging their streets.
Then he returned to Culiacan to tell his wonder-
ful stories. His tales fired the ambition and
stimulated the avarice of a horde of adventurers.
At the head of four hundred of these Coronado
penetrated the wilds of Pimeria (now Arizona).
He found seven Indian towns but no lofty
houses, no great cities, no gold or silver. Cibola
was a myth. Hearing of a country called Quivira
far to the north, richer than Cibola, with part of
his force he set out to find it. In his search he
penetrated inland as far as the plains of Kansas,
but Quivira proved to be as poor as Cibola, and
Coronado returned disgusted. The Friar de
Niza had evidently drawn on his imagination
which seemed to be quite rich in cities.

Alarcon reached the head of the Gulf of Cal-
ifornia. Seeing what he supposed to be an in-
let, but the water proving too shallow for his
ships to enter it, he manned two boats and
found his supposed inlet to.be the mouth of a
great river. He named it Buena Guia (Good
Guide) now the Colorado. He sailed up it some
distance and was probably the first white man to
set foot upon the soil of Upper California. He
heard of Coronado in the interior but was unable
to establish communication with him. He de-
scended the river in his boats, embarked on his
vessels and returned to Mexico. The Viceroy

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Mendoza, who had fitted out the expedition of
Alarcon, was bitterly disappointed on the re-
turn of that explorer. He had hoped to find the
ships loaded with the spoils of the seven cities.

The report of the discovery of a great river did
not interest his sordid soul. Alarcon found him-
self a disgraced man. lie retired to private life
and not long after died a broken hearted man.

CHAPTER II.

ALTA OR NUEVA CALIFORNIA.

WHILE Coronado was still wandering
in the interior of the continent search-
ing for Quivira and its king, Tatar-
rax, who wore a long beard, adored a gol-
den cross and worshipped an image of the
queen of heaven, Pedro de Alvarado, one of
Cortes' former lieutenants, arrived from Guate-
mala, of which country he was governor, with a
fleet of twelve ships. These were anchored in
the harbor of Navidad. Mendoza, the viceroy,
had been intriguing with Alvarado against
Cortes; obtaining an interest in the fleet, he
and Alvarado began preparations for an ex-
tensive scheme of exploration and conquest. Be-
fore they had perfected their plans an insurrec-
tion broke out among the Indians of Jalisco, and
Pedro de Alvarado in attempting to quell it
was killed. Mendoza fell heir to the fleet. The
return of Coronado about this time dispelled the
popular beliefs in Cibola and Quivira and put
an end to further explorations of the inland re-
gions of the northwest.

It became necessary for Mendoza to find
something for his fleet to do. The Islas de
Poiniente, or Isles of the Setting Sun (now the
Philippines), had been discovered by Magellan.
To these Mendoza dispatched five ships of the
fleet under command of Lopez de Villalobos to
establish trade with the natives. Two ships of
the fleet, the San Salvador and the Vitoria, were
placed under the command of Juan Rodriguez
Cabrillo, reputed to be a Portuguese by birth and
dispatched to explore the northwest coast of
the Pacific. Cabrillo sailed from Navidad, June
27, 1542. Rounding the southern extremity of
the peninsula of Lower California, he sailed up
its outer coast. August 20 he reached Cabo del
Engano, the most northerly point of Ulloa's ex-
ploration. On the 28th of September, 1542, he

entered a bay which he named San Miguel (now
San Diego), where he found "a land locked and
very good harbor." He remained in this harbor
until October 3. Continuing his voyage he sailed
along the coast eighteen leagues, discovering
two islands about seven leagues from the main
land. These he named San Salvador and Ykoria
after his ships (now Santa Catalina and San
Clemente). On the 8th of October he crossed
the channel between the islands and main land
and anchored in a bay which he named Bahia
de los Fumos y Fuegos, the Bay of Smokes and
Fires (now known as the Bay of San Pedro).
Pleavy clouds of smoke hung over the head-
lands of the coast; and inland, fierce fires were
raging. The Indians either through accident
or design had set fire to the long dry grass that
covered the plains at this season of the year.

After sailing six leagues further up the coast
he anchored in a large ensenada or bight, now
the Bay of Santa Monica. It is uncertain
whether he landed at either place. The next
day he sailed eight leagues to an Indian town
which he named the Pueblo de las Canoas (tin-
town of Canoes). This town was located on or
near the present site of San Buenaventura.
Sailing northwestward he passed through the
Santa Barbara Channel, discovering the islands
of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel.
Continuing up the coast he passed a long nar-
row point of land extending into the sea, which
from its resemblance to a galley boat he named
Cabo de la Galera, the Cape of the Galley (now
called Point Concepcion). Baffled by head
winds, the explorers slowly beat their way up
the coast. On the 17th of November, they cast
anchor in a large bay which they named Bahia
de los Pinos, the Bay of Pines (now the Ba;
of Monterey). Finding it impossible to land jn

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

account of the heavy sea, Cabrillo continued his
voyage northward. After reaching a point on
the coast in 40 degrees north latitude, accord-
ing to his reckoning, the increasing cold and
the storms becoming more frequent, he turned
back and ran down the coast to the island of
San Miguel, which he reached November 23.
Here he decided to winter.

While on the island in October, he had broken
his arm by a fall. Suffering from his broken
arm he had continued in command. Exposure
and unskilful surgery caused his death. He
died January 3, 1543, and was buried on the
island. His last resting place is supposed to
be on the shore of Cuyler's harbor, on the
island of San Miguel. No trace of his grave
has ever been found. His companions named
the island Juan Rodriguez, but he has been
robbed of even this slight tribute to his mem-
ory. It would be a slight token of regard if
the state would name the island Cabrillo. Saint
Miguel has been well remembered in California
and could spare an island.

Cabrillo on his death bed urged his successor
in command, the pilot Bartolome Ferrolo, to
continue the exploration. Ferrolo prosecuted
the voyage of discovery with a courage and dar-
ing equal to that of Cabrillo. About the middle
of February he left the harbor where he had
spent most of the winter and after having made
a short voyage in search of more islands he
bailed up the coast. February 28, he discovered
a cape which he named Mendocino in honor of
the viceroy, a name it still bears. Passing the
cape he encountered a fierce storm which drove
him violently to the northeast, greatly endanger-
ing his ships. On March 1st, the fog partially
lifting, he discovered a cape which he named
Blanco, in the southern part of what is now the
--late of Oregon. The weather continuing stormy
and the cold increasing as he sailed northward,
Ferrolo reluctantly turned back. Running
down the coast he reached the island of San
1 llemente. There in a storm the ships parted
company and Ferrolo, after a search, gave up
the Yitoria as lost. The ships, however, came
together at Cerros island and from there, in
sore distress for provisions, the explorers
reached Navidad April 18, 1543. On the discov-

eries made by Cabrillo and Ferrolo the Span-
iards claimed the territory on the Pacific coast
of North America up to the forty-second degree
of north latitude, a claim that they maintained
for three hundred years.

The next navigator who visited California was
Francis Drake, an Englishman. He was not
seeking new lands, but a way to escape the
■vengeance of the Spaniards. Francis Drake,
the "Sea King of Devon," was one of the brav-
est men that ever lived. Early in his maritime
life he had suffered from the cruelty and injus-
tice of the Spaniards. Throughout his subse-
quent career, which reads more like romance
than reality, he let no opportunity slip to pun-
ish his old-time enemies. It mattered little to
Drake whether his country was at peace or war
with Spain; he considered a Spanish ship or a
Spanish town his legitimate prey. On one of
his predatory expeditions he captured a Spanish
town on the isthmus of Panama named El Nom-
bre de Dios, The Name of God. Its holy name
did not protect it from Drake's rapacity. While
on the isthmus he obtained information of the
Spanish settlements of the South Pacific and
from a high point of land saw the South sea, as
the Pacific ocean was then called. On his re-
turn to England he announced his intention of
fitting out a privateering expedition against the
Spaniards of the South Pacific. Although Spain
and England were at peace, he received encour-
agement from the nobility, even Queen Eliza-
beth herself secretly contributing a thousand
crown towards the venture.

Drake sailed out of Plymouth harbor, Eng-
land, December 13, 1577, in command of a fleet
of five small vessels, bound for the Pacific coast
of South America. Some of his vessels were
lost at sea and others turned back, until when
he emerged from the Straits of Magellan he had
but one left, the Pelican. He changed its name
to the Golden Hind. It was a ship of only one
hundred tons' burden. Sailing up the South
Pacific coast, he spread terror and devastation
among the Spanish settlements, robbing towns
and capturing ships until, in the quaint language
of a chronicler of the expedition, he "had loaded
his vessel with a fabulous amount of fine wares
of Asia, precious stones, church ornaments,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

gold piate and so mooch silver as did ballas the
Goulden Hinde."

From one treasure ship, the Caca Fuego, he
obtained thirteen chests of silver, eighty pounds
weight of gold, twenty-six tons of uncoined sil-
ver, two silver drinking vessels, precious stones
and a quantity of jewels; the total value of his
prize amounted to three hundred and sixty
thousand pesos (dollars). Having spoiled the
Spaniards of treasure amounting to "eight hun-
dred sixty-six thousand pesos of silver * * *
a hundred thousand pesos of gold * * *
and other things of great worth, he thought it
not good to return by the streight (Magellan)
* * * least the Spaniards should there waite
and attend for him in great numbers and
strength, whose hands, he being left but one
ship, he could not possibly escape."

Surfeited with spoils and his ship loaded with
plunder, it became necessary for him to find the
shortest and safest route home. To return by
the way he came was to invite certain destruc-
tion to his ship and death to all on board. At
an island off the coast of Nicaragua he over-
hauled and refitted his ship. He determined to
seek the Straits of Anian that were believed to
connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Strik-
ing boldly out on an unknown sea, he sailed
more than a thousand leagues northward. En-
countering contrary winds and the cold in-
creasing as he advanced, he gave up his search
for the mythical straits, and, turning, he ran
down the northwest coast of North America to
latitude 380, where "hee found a harborrow for
his ship." He anchored in it June 17, 1579.
This "convenient and fit harborrow" is under
the lee of Point Reyes and is now known as
Sir Francis Drake's Bay.

Fletcher, the chronicler of Drake's voyage, in
his narrative, "The World Encompassed," says:
"The 3rd day following, viz., the 21st, our ship
having received a leake at sea was brought to
anchor neerer the shoare that her goods being
landed she might be repaired; but for that we
were to prevent any danger that might chance
against our safety our Generall first of all
landed his men with necessary provision to build
tents and make a fort for defense of ourselves
and goods; and that we might under the shel-

ter of it with more safety (whatsoever should
befall) end our business."

The ship was drawn upon the beach, careened
on its side, caulked and refitted. While the
crew were repairing the ship the natives visited
them in great numbers. From some of their ac-
tions Drake inferred that they regarded himself
and his men as gods. To disabuse them of this
idea, Drake ordered his chaplain, Fletcher, to
perform divine service according to the English
Church Ritual and preach a sermon. The In-
dians were greatly delighted with the psalm
singing, but their opinion of Fletcher's sermon
is not known.

From certain ceremonial performance Drake
imagined that the Indians were offering him the
sovereignty of their land and themselves as sub-
jects of the English crown. Drake gladly ac-
cepted their proffered allegiance and formally
took possession of the country in the name of
the English sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. He
named it New Albion, "for two causes: the one
in respect of the white bankes and cliffes which
ly towardes the sea; and the other because it
might have some affinitie with our own country
in name which sometimes was so called."

Having completed the reoairs to his ship,
Drake made ready to depart, but before leav-
ing "Our Generall with his company made a
journey up into the land. The inland we found
to be farre different from the shoare; a goodly
country and fruitful soyle, stored with many
blessings fit for the use of man; infinite was the
company of very large and fat deere which
there we saw by thousands as we supposed in a
heard."* They saw great numbers of small bur-
rowing animals, which they called conies, but
which were probably ground squirrels. Before
departing, Drake set up a monument to show
that he had taken possession of the country. To a
large post firmly set in the ground he nailed a
brass plate on which was engraved the name of
the English Queen, the date of his arrival and the
statement that the king and people of the coun-
try had voluntarily become vassals of the Eng-
lish crown; a new sixpence was fastened to the
plate to show the Queen's likeness.

*\Yorld Encompassed.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

After a stay of thirty-six days, Drake took
his departure, much to the regret of the Indians.
He stoppeJ at the Farallones islands for a short
time to lay in a supply of seal meat; then he
sailed for England by the way of the Cape of
Good Hope. After encountering many perils,
he arrived safely at Plymouth, the port from
which he sailed nearly three years before, hav-
ing "encompassed" or circumnavigated the
globe. His exploits and the booty he brought
back made him the most famous naval hero of
his lime. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth
and accorded extraordinary honors by the na-
tion. He believed himself to be the first dis-
coverer of the country he called New Albion.
"The Spaniards never had any dealings or so
much as set foote in this country; the utmost
of their discoveries reaching only to many de-
grees southward of this place."* The English
founded no claim on Drake's discoveries. The
land hunger that characterizes that nation now
had not then been developed.

Fifty years passed after Cabrillo's visit to Cal-
ifornia before another attempt was made by the
Spaniards to explore her coast. Through all
these years on their return voyage far out be-
yond the islands the Manila galleons, freighted
with the wealth of "Ormus and Ind," sailed
down the coast of Las Californias from Cape
Mendocino to Acapulco. Often storm-tossed
and always scourged with that dread malady of
the sea, the scurvy, there was no harbor of ref-
uge for them to put into because his most Cath-
olic Majesty, the King of Spain, had no money
to spend in exploring an unknown coast where
there was no return to be expected except per-
haps the saving of a few sailors' lives.

In 1593, the question of a survey of the Cali-
fornia coast for harbors to accommodate the in-
creasing Philippine trade was agitated and Don
Luis de Velasco, viceroy of New Spain, in a let-
ter dated at Mexico, April 8, 1593, thus writes to
his majesty: "In order to make the exploration
or demarcation of the harbors of this main as
far as the Philippine islands, as your majesty
orders, money is lacking, and if it be not taken
from the royal strong box it cannot be supplied,

*The World Encompassed.

as for some time past a great deal of money has
been owing to the royal treasury on account
of fines forfeited to it, legal cost and the like."
Don Luis fortunately discovers a way to save
the contents of the royal strong box and hastens
to acquaint his majesty with his plan. In a let-
ter written to the king from the City of Mexico,
April 6, 1594, he says: "I ordered the navigator
who at present sails in the flag ship, who is
named Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeho, and who
is a man of experience in his calling, one who
can be depended upon and who has means of
his own, although he is a Portuguese, there
being no Spaniards of his profession whose serv-
ices are available, that he should make the ex-
ploration and demarcation, and I offered, if he
would do this, to give him his remuneration in
the way of taking on board merchandise; and
I wrote to the governor (of the Philippines)
that he should allow him to put on board the
ship some tons of cloth that he might have the
benefit of the freight-money." The result of
Don Luis's economy and the outcome of at-
tempting to explore an unknown coast in a
heavily laden merchant ship are given in a para-
graph taken from a letter written by a royal offi-
cer from Acapulco, February 1, 1596, to the
viceroy Conde de Monterey, the successor of
Velasco: "On Wednesday, the 31st of January
of this year, there entered this harbor a vessel
of the kind called in the Philippines a viroco,
having on board Juan de Morgana, navigating
officer, four Spanish sailors, five Indians and a
negro, who brought tidings that the ship San
Agustin, of the exploring expedition, had been
lost on a coast where she struck and went to
pieces, and that a barefooted friar and another
person of those on board had been drowned and
that the seventy men or more who embarked in
this small vessel only these came in her, be-
cause the captain of said ship, Sebastian Rodri-
guez Cermeho, and the others went ashore at
the port of Navidad, and, as they understand,
have already arrived in that city (Mexico). An
account of the voyage and of the loss of the
ship, together with the statement made under
oath by said navigating officer, Juan de Mor-
gana, accompany this. We visited officially the
vessel, finding no kind of merchandise on board,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and that the men were almost naked. The ves-
sel being so small it seems miraculous that she
should have reached this country with so many
people on board." A viroco was a small vessel
without a deck, having one or two square sails,
and propelled by sweeps. Its hull was formed
from a single tree, hollowed out and having the
sides built up with planks. The San Agustin
was wrecked in what is now called Francis
Drake's Bay, about thirty miles north of San
Francisco. To make a voyage from there to
Acapulco in such a vessel, with seventy men on
board, and live to tell the tale, was an exploit
that exceeded the most hazardous undertakings
of the Argonauts of '49.

The viceroy, Conde de Monte Rey, in a let-
ter dated at Mexico, April 19, 1596, gives the
king tidings of the loss of the San Agustin. He
writes: 'Touching the loss of the ship, San
Agustin, which was on its way from the islands
of the west (the Philippines) for the purpose of
making the exploration of the coast of the South
Sea, in accordance with your Majesty's orders
to Viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco, I wrote to
Your Majesty by the second packet (mailship)
what I send as duplicate with this." He then
goes on to tell how he had examined the offi-
cers in regard to the loss of the vessel and that
they tried to inculpate one another. The navi-
gating officer even in the viroco tried to ex-
plore the principal bays which they crossed, but
on account of the hunger and illness they expe-
rienced he was compelled to hasten the voyage.
The viceroy concludes: "Thus I take it, as to
this exploration the intention of Your Majesty
has not been carried into effect. It is the gen-
eral opinion that this enterprise should not be
attempted on the return voyage from the islands
and with a laden ship, but from this coast and
by constantly following along it." The above
account of the loss of the San Agustin is taken
from Volume II, Publications of the Historical
Society of Southern California, and is the only
correct account published. In September, 1595,
just before the viceroy, Don Luis de Velasco,
was superseded by Conde de Monte Rey, he
entered into a contract with certain parties of
whom Sebastian Viscaino, a ship captain, was
the principal, to make an expedition up the Gulf

of California "for the purpose of fishing for
pearls." There was also a provision in the con-
tract empowering Viscaino to make explorations
and take possession of his discoveries for the
crown of Spain. The Conde de Monte Key
seems, from a letter written to the King, to have
seriously doubted whether Viscaino was the
right man for so important an expedition, but
finally allowed him to depart. In September,
1596, Viscaino sailed up the gulf with a Beet of
three vessels, the flag ship San Francisco, the
San Jose and a Lancha. The flag ship was dis-
abled and left at La Paz. With the other two
vessels he sailed up the gulf to latitude 2<j\ He
encountered severe storms. At some island he
had trouble with the Indians and killed several.
As the long boat was departing an Indian
wounded one of the rowers with an arrow. The
sailor dropped his oar, the boat careened and
upset, drowning twenty of the twenty-six sol-
diers and sailors in it.

Viscaino returned without having procured
any pearls or made any important discoveries.
He proposed to continue his explorations of the
Californias, but on account of his misfortunes
his request was held in abeyance. He wrote a
letter to the king in 1597, setting forth what
supplies he required for the voyage. His in-
ventory of the items needed is interesting, but
altogether too long for insertion here. Among
the items were "$35,000 in money"; "eighty ar-
robas of powder": " twenty quintals of lead";
"four pipes of wine for mass and sick friars";
"vestments for the clergy and $2,000 to be in-
vested in trifles for the Indians for the purpose
of attracting them peaceably to receive the holy
gospel." Yiscaino's request was not granted at
that time. The viceroy and the royal audiencia
at one time ordered his commission revoked.
Philip II died in 1598 and was succeeded by
Philip III. After five years' waiting, Viscaino
was allowed to proceed with Ins explorations.
From Acapulcc on the 5th of May, 1602, he
writes to the king that he is ready to sail with
his ships "for the discovery of harbors and bays
of the coast of the South Sea as far as Cape
Mendocino." "I report," he says, "merely that
the said Viceroy (Conde de Monterey) has en-
trusted to me the accomplishment of the same

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

in two ships, a lancha and a barcoluengo,
manned with sailors and soldiers and provi-
sioned for eleven months. To-day being Sun-
day, the 5th of May, I sail at five o'clock in the
nanu s of God and his blessed mother and your
majesty."

Yiscaino followed the same course marked
out by Cabrillo sixty years before. November
io, 1602, he anchored in Cabrillo's Bay of San
Miguel. Whether the faulty reckoning of Ca-
brillo left him in doubt of the points named by
the first discoverer, or whether it was that he
might receive the credit of their discovery, Yis-
caino changed the names given by Cabrillo to
the islands, bays and headlands along the Cali-
fornia coast. Cabrillo's Bahia San Miguel be-
came the Bay of San Diego; San Salvador and
Yitoria were changed to Santa Catalina and
San Clcmente, and Cabrillo's Bahia de los
Fumos y Fuegos appears on Viscaino's map as
the Ensenada de San Andres, but in a descrip-
tion of the voyage compiled by the cosmog-
rapher, Cabrero Bueno, it is named San Pedro.
It is not named for the Apostle St. Peter, but
for St. Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, whose day
in the Catholic calendar is November 26, the
day of the month Yiscaino anchored in the Bay
of San Pedro.

Sailing up the coast, Yiscaino passed through
the Santa Barbara channel, which was so named
by Antonio de la Ascencion, a Carmelite friar,
who was chaplain of one of the ships. The ex-
pedition entered the channel December 4, which
is the day in the Catholic calendar dedicated to
Santa Barbara. He visited the mainland near
Point Concepcion where the Indian chief of a
populous rancheria offered each Spaniard who
would become a resident of his town ten wives.
This generous offer was rejected. December
15, 1602, he reached Point Pinos, so named by
Cabrillo, and cast anchor in the bay formed by
its projection. This bay he named Monterey,
in honor of the viceroy, Conde de Monte Rey.
Many of his men were sick with the scurvy and
his provisions were becoming exhausted; so,
placing the sick and disabled on the San Tomas,
he sent them back to Acapulco; but few of them
over reached their destination. On the 3d of
January, 1603, with two ships, he proceeded on

his search for Cape Mendocino, the northern
limit of his survey. The Manila galleons on
their return voyage from the Philippines sailed
up the Asiatic coast to the latitude of Japan,
when, taking advantage of the westerly winds
and the Japan current, they crossed the Pacific,
striking the North American coast in about the
latitude of Cape Mendocino, and from there
they ran down the coast of Las Californias and
across the gulf to Acapulco. After leaving
Point Reyes a storm separated his ships and
drove him as far north as Cape Blanco. The
smaller vessel, commanded by Martin de Agui-
lar, was driven north by the storm to latitude
430, where he discovered what seemed to be
the mouth of a great river; attempting to enter
it, he was driven back by the swift current.
Aguilar, believing he had discovered the western
entrance of the Straits of Anian, sailed for
New Spain to report his discovery. He, his
chief pilot and most of his crew died of scurvy
before the vessel reached Navidad. Viscaino,
after sighting Cape Blanco, turned and sailed
down the coast of California, reaching Acapulco
March 21, 1603.

Viscaino, in a letter to the King of Spain,
dated at the City of Mexico, May 23, 1603,
grows enthusiastic over California climate and
productions. It is the earliest known specimen
of California boom literature. After depicting
the commodiousness of Monterey Bay as a port
of safety for the Philippine ships, he says: "This
port is sheltered from all winds, while on the im-
mediate shores there are pines, from which masts
of any desired size can be obtained, as well as
live oaks and white oaks, rosemary, the vine, the
rose of Alexandria, a great variety of game, such
as rabbits, hare, partridges and other sorts and
species found in Spain. This land has a genial
climate, its waters are good and it is fertile,
judging from the varied and luxuriant growth
of trees and plants ; and it is thickly settled with
people whom I found to be of gentle disposition,
peaceable and docile. * * * Their food con-
sists of seeds which they have in great abun-
dance and variety, and of the flesh of game such
as deer, which are larger than cows, and bear,
and of neat cattle and bisons and many other
animals. ,Th? Indians are of good stature and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

r.i

fair complexion, the women being somewhat
less in size than the men, and of pleasing counte-
nance. The clothing of the people of the coast
lands consists of the skins of the sea wolves
(otter) abounding there, which they tan and
dress better than is done in Castile; they pos-
sess also in great quantity flax like that of Cas-
tile, hemp and cotton, from which they make
fishing lines and nets for rabbits and hares.
They have vessels of pine wood, very well made,
in which they go to sea with fourteen paddle-
men of a side, with great dexterity in very
stormy weather. * * * They are well ac-
quainted with gold and silver and said that
these were found in the interior."

The object of Yiscaino's boom literature of
three hundred years ago was the promotion of a
colony scheme for the founding of a settlement
on Monterey Bay. He visited Spain to obtain the
consent of the king and assistance in planting
a colony. After many delays, Philip III, in
1606, ordered the viceroy of Xew Spain to fit
out immediately an expedition to be com-
manded by Yiscaino for the occupation and set-
tlement of the port of Monterey. Before the ex-
pedition could be gotten ready Viscaino died and
his colonization scheme died with him. Had he
lived to carry out his scheme, the settlement of
California would have antedated that of James-
town, Va., by one year.

CHAPTER III.

COLONIZATION OF ALTA CALIFORNIA.

ft HUNDRED and sixty years passed after
the abandonment of Viscaino's coloniza-
tion scheme before the Spanish crown
made another attempt to utilize its vast posses-
sions in Alta California. The Manila galleons
sailed down the coast year after year for more
than a century and a half, yet in all this long
space of time none of them so far as we know
ever entered a harbor or bay on the upper Cali-
fornia coast. Spain still held her vast colonial
possessions in America, but with a loosening
grasp. As the years went by she had fallen
from her high estate. Her power on sea and
land had weakened. Those brave old sea kings,
Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher, had destroyed
her invincible Armada and burned her ships in
her very harbors. The English and Dutch pri-
vateers had preyed upon her commerce on the
high seas and the buccaneers had robbed her
treasure ships and devastated her settlements on
the islands and the Spanish main, while the free-
booters of many nations had time and again
captured her galleons and ravished her colonies
on the Pacific coast. The energy and enterprise
that had been a marked characteristic of her
people in the days of Cortes and Pizarro were
ebbing away. The age of luxury that began

with the influx of the wealth which flowed into
the mother country from her American colonies
engendered intrigue and official corruption
among her rulers, demoralized her army and
prostrated her industries. While her kings and
her nobles were revelling in luxury the poor were
crying for bread. Proscriptive laws and the fear
of her Holy Inquisition had driven into exile
many of the most enterprising and most intelli-
gent of her people. These baneful influences
had palsied the bravery and spirit of adventure
that had been marked characteristics of the
Spaniards in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies. Other nations stood ready to take ad-
vantage of her decadence. Her old-time enemy,
England, which had gained in power as Spain
had lost, was ever on the alert to take advantage
of her weakness ; and another power, Russia,
almost unknown among the powers of Europe
when Spain was in her prime, was threatening
her possessions in Alta California. To hold this
vast country it must be colonized, but her re-
strictions on commerce and her proscriptive laws
against foreign immigrants had shut the door to
her colonial possessions against colonists from
all other nations. Pier sparse settlements in Mex-
ico could spare no colonists. The native in-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

habitants of California must be converted to
Christianity and made into citizens. Poor mate-
rial indeed were these degraded savages, but
Spain's needs were pressing and missionary zeal
was powerful. Indeed, the pristine courage and
daring of the Spanish soldier seemed to have
passed to her missionary priest.

The Jesuits had begun missionary work in
1697 among the degraded inhabitants of Lower
California. With a perseverance that was highly
commendable and a bravery that was heroic,
under their devoted leaders, Salvatierra, Kino,
Ugarte, Piccolo and their successors, they
founded sixteen missions on the peninsula.
Father Kino (or Kuhn), a German Jesuit, be-
sides his missionary work, between 1694 and
1702, had made explorations around the head
of the Gulf of California and up the Rio Colo-
rado to the mouth of the Gila, which had clearly
demonstrated that Lower California was a pen-
insula and not an island. Although Ulloa bad
sailed down the inner coast and up the outer
coast of Lower California and Domingo del
Castillo, a Spanish pilot, had made a correct
map showing it to be a peninsula, so strong was
the belief in the existence of the Straits of
Anian that one hundred and sixty years after
Ulloa's voyage Las Californias were still be-
lieved to be islands and were sometimes called
Islas Carolinas, or the Islands of Charles, named
so for Charles II. of Spain. Father Kino had
formed the design of establishing a chain of mis-
sions from Sonora around the head of the gulf
and down the inner coast of Lower California to
Cape San Lucas. He did not live to complete
his ambitious project. The Jesuit missions of
Baja California never grew rich in flocks and
herds. The country was sterile and the few
small valleys of fertile land around the missions
gave the padres and the neophytes at best but a
frugal return for their labors.

For years there had been, in the Catholic
countries of Europe, a growing fear and dis-
trust of the Jesuits. Portugal had declared them
traitors to the government and had banished
them in 1759 from her dominions. France had
suppressed the order in her domains in 1764.
In 1767, King Carlos III., by a pragmatic sanc-
tion or decree, ordered their expulsion from

Spain and all her American colonies. So great
and powerful was the influence of the order that
the decree for their expulsion was kept secret
until the moment of its execution. Throughout
all parts of the kingdom, at a certain hour of
the night, a summons came to every college,
monastery or other establishment where mem-
bers of the order dwelt, to assemble by com-
mand of the king in the chapel or refectory
immediately. The decree of perpetual banish-
ment was then read to them. They were hastily
bundled into vehicles that were awaiting them
outside and hurried to the nearest seaport,
where they were shipped to Rome. During
their journey to the sea-coast they were not al-
lowed to communicate with their friends nor
permitted to speak to persons they met on the
way. By order of the king, any subject who
should undertake to vindicate the Jesuits in writ-
ing should be deemed guilty of treason and con-
demned to death.

The Lower California missions were too dis-
tant and too isolated to enforce the king's de-
cree with the same haste and secrecy that was
observed in Spain and Mexico. To Governor
Gaspar de Portola was entrusted the enforce-
ment of their banishment. These missions were
transferred to the Franciscans, but it took time
to make the substitution. He proceeded with
great caution and care lest the Indians should
become rebellious and demoralized. It was not
until February, 1768, that all the Jesuit mis-
sionaries were assembled at La Paz; from there
they were sent to Mexico and on the 13th of
April, at Vera Cruz, they bade farewell to the
western continent.

At the head of the Franciscan contingent that
took charge of the abandoned missions of Baja
California, was Father Junipero Serra, a man
of indomitable will and great missionary zeal.
Miguel Jose Serra was born on the island of
Majorica in the year 1713. After completing his
studies in the Lullian University, at the age of
eighteen he became a monk and was admitted
into the order of Franciscans. On taking or-
ders he assumed the name of Junipero (Juniper).
Among the disciples of St. Francis was a very
zealous and devoted monk who bore the name
of Junipero, of whom St. Francis once said,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

"Would to God, my brothers, that I had a whole
forest of such Junipers." Serra's favorite study
was the "Lives of the Saints," and no doubt the
study of the life of the original Junipero influ-
enced him to take that saint's name. Serra's
ambition was to become a missionary, but it was
not until he was nearly forty years of age that
his desire was gratified. In 1749 he came to
Mexico and January 1, 1750, entered the College
of San Fernando. A few months later he was
given charge of an Indian mission in the Sierra
Gorda mountains, where, with his assistant and
lifelong friend, Father Palou, he remained nine
years. Under his instructions the Indians were
taught agriculture and the mission became a
model establishment of its kind. From this
mountain mission Serra returned to the city of
Mexico. He spent seven years in doing mis-
sionary work among the Spanish population of
the capital and surrounding country. His suc-
cess as a preacher and his great missionary zeal
led to his selection as president of the missions
of California, from which the Jesuits had been
removed. April 2, 1768, he arrived in the port of
Loreto with fifteen associates from the College
of San Fernando. These were sent to the dif-
ferent missions of the peninsula. These mis-
sions extended over a territory seven hundred
miles in length and it required several months
to locate all the missionaries.

The scheme for the occupation and coloniza-
tion of Alta California was to be jointly the
work of church and state. The representative
of the state was Jose de Galvez, visitador-gen-
eral of New Spain, a man of untiring energy,
great executive ability, sound business sense
and, as such men are and ought to be, some-
what arbitrary. Galvez reached La Paz in July,
1768. At once he began investigating the condi-
tion of the peninsular missions and supplying
their needs. This done, he turned his attention
to the northern colonization. Establishing his
headquarters at Santa Ana near La Paz, he sum-
moned Father Junipero for consultation in
regard to the founding of missions in Alta Cali-
fornia. It was decided to proceed to the initial
points, San Diego and Monterey, by land and
sea. Three ships were to be dispatched carrying
the heavier articles, such as agricultural imple-

ments, church ornaments, and a supply of provi-
sions for the support of the soldiers and priest
after their arrival in California. The expedi-
tion by land was to take along cattle and
horses to stock the country. This expedition
was divided into two detachments, the advance
one under the command of Rivera y Moncada,
who had been a long time in the country, and
the second division under Governor Caspar de
Portola, who was a newcomer. Captain Rivera
was sent northward to collect from the missions
ail the live stock and supplies that could be
spared and take them to Santa Maria, the most
northern mission of the peninsula. Stores of
all kinds were collected at La Paz. Father
Serra made a tour of the missions and secured
such church furniture, ornaments and vestments
as could be spared.

The first vessel fitted out for the expedition
by sea was the San Carlos, a ship of about
two hundred tons burden, leaky and badly con-
structed. She sailed from La Paz January 9.
1769, under the command of Vicente Vila. In
addition to the crew there were twenty-five Cat-
aionian soldiers, commanded by Lieutenant
Fages, Pedro Prat, the surgeon, a Franciscan
friar, two blacksmiths, a baker, a cook and two
tortilla makers. Galvez in a small vessel accom-
panied the San Carlos to Cape San Lucas, where
he landed and set to work to fit out the San
Antonio. On the 15th of February this vessel
sailed from San Jose del Cabo (San Jose of the
Cape), under the command of Juan Perez, an
expert pilot, who had been engaged in the Phil-
ippine trade. On this vessel went two Franciscan
friars, Juan Viscaino and Francisco Gomez.
Captain Rivera y Moncada, who was to pioneer
the way, had collected supplies and cattle at Yel-

icata on the northern frontier. From here, with
1

a small force of soldiers, a gang of neophytes
and three muleteers, and accompanied by Padre
Crespi, he began his march to San Diego on the
24th of March, 1769.

The second land expedition, commanded by
Governor Gaspar de Portola in person, began
its march from Loreto, March 9, 1769. Father
Serra, who was to have accompanied it, was de-
tained at Loreto by a sore leg. He joined the
expedition at Santa Maria, May 5. where it had

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

been waiting for him some time. It then pro-
ceeded to Rivera's camp at Velicata, sixty miles
further north, where Serra founded a mission,
naming it San Fernando. Campa Coy, a friar
who had accompanied the expedition thus far,
was left in charge. This mission was intended •
as a frontier post in the travel between the pen-
insular missions and the Alta California settle-
ments. On the 15th of May Portola began his
northern march, following the trail of Rivera.
Galvez had named, by proclamation, St. Joseph
as the patron saint of the California expeditions.
Santa Maria was designated as the patroness of
conversions.

The San Antonia, the last vessel to sail, was
the first to arrive at San Diego. It anchored in
the bay April 11, 1769, after a prosperous voy-
age of twenty-four days. There she remained
at anchor, awaiting the arrival of the San Car-
los, the Hag ship of the expedition, which had
sailed more than a month before her. On the
29th of April the San Carlos, after a disastrous
voyage of one hundred and ten days, drifted
into the Bay of San Diego, her crew prostrated
with the scurvy, not enough able-bodied men
being left to man a boat. Canvas tents were
pitched and the afflicted men taken ashore.
When the disease had run its course nearly all
of the crew of the San Carlos, half of the sol-
diers who had come on her, and nine of the
sailors of the San Antonio, were dead.

On the 14th of May Captain Rivera y Mon-
cada's detachment arrived. The expedition had
made the journey from Velicata in fifty-one
days. On the first of July the second division,
commanded by Portola, arrived. The journey
had been uneventful. The four divisions of the
grand expedition were now united, but its num-
bers had been greatly reduced. Out of two
hundred and nineteen who had set out by land
and sea only one hundred and twenty-six re-
mained; death from scurvy and the desertion of
the neophytes had reduced the numbers nearly
one-half. The ravages of the scurvy had de-
stroyed the crew of one of the vessels and
greatly crippled that of the other, so it was im-
possible to proceed by sea to Monterey, the
second objective point of the expedition. A
council of the officers was held and it was de-

cided to send the San Antonia back to San Bias
for supplies and sailors to man the San Carlos.
The San Antonia sailed on the 9th of July and
after a voyage of twenty days reached her des-
tination; but short as the voyage was, half of
the crew died of the scurvy on the passage. In
early American navigation the scurvy was the
most dreaded scourge of the sea, more to be
feared than storm and shipwreck. These might
happen occasionally, but the scurvy always made
its appearance on long voyages, and sometimes
destroyed the whole ship's crew. Its appearance
and ravages were largely due to the neglect of
sanitary precautions and to the utter indiffer-
ence of those in authority to provide for the
comfort and health of the sailors. The interces-
sion of the saints, novenas, fasts and penance
were relied upon to protect and save the vessel
and her crew, while the simplest sanitary meas-
ures were utterly disregarded. A blind, unrea-
soning faith that was always seeking interposi-
tion from some power without to preserve and
ignoring the power within, was the bane and
curse of that age of superstition.

If the mandates of King Carlos III. and the
instructions of the visitador-general, Jose de
Galvez, were to be carried out, the expedition
for the settlement of the second point designated
(Monterey) must be made by land; accordingly
Governor Portola set about organizing his
forces for the overland journey. On the 14th
of July the expedition began its march. It con-
sisted of Governor Portola, Padres Crespi and
Gomez, Captain Rivera y Moncada, Lieutenant
Pedro Pages, Engineer Miguel Constanso, sol-
diers, muleteers and Indian servants, number-
ing in all sixty-two persons.

On the 1 6th of July, two days after the de-
parture of Governor Portola, Father Junipero,
assisted by Padres Viscaino and Parron, founded
the mission of San Diego. The site selected
was in what is now Old Town,' near the tempo-
rary presidio, which had been hastily con-
structed before the departure of Governor Por-
tola. A hut of boughs had been constructed
and in this the ceremonies of founding were
held. The Indians, while interested in what was
going on, manifested no desire to be converted.
They were willing to receive gifts, particularly

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

of cloth, but would not taste the food of the
Spaniards, fearing that it contained poison and
attributing the many deaths among the soldiers
and sailors to the food. The Indians had a great
liking for pieces of cloth, and their desire to
obtain this led to an attack upon the people of
the mission. On the 14th of August, taking
advantage of the absence of Padre Parron and
two soldiers, they broke into the mission and
began robbing it and the beds of the sick. The
four soldiers, a carpenter and a blacksmith ral-
lied to the defense, and after several of their
numbers had fallen by the guns of the soldiers,
the Indians fled. A boy servant of the padres
was killed and Father Viscaino wounded in the
hand. After this the Indians were more cau-
tious.

We now return to the march of Portola's ex-
pedition. As the first exploration of the main
land of California was made by it, I give con-
siderable space to the incidents of the journey.
Crespi, Constanso and Fages kept journals of
the march. I quote from those of Constanso
and Crespi. Lieutenant Constanso thus de-
scribes the order of the march. "The setting-
forth was on the 14th day of June* of the cited
year of '69. The two divisions of the expedition
by land marched in one, the commander so ar-
ranging because the number of horse-herd and
packs was much, since of provisions and victuals
alone they carried one hundred packs, which he
estimated to be necessary to ration all the folk
during six months; thus providing against a
delay of the packets, altho' it was held to be
impossible that in this interval some one of
them should fail to arrive at Monterey. On
the marches the following order was observed:
At the head went the commandant with the offi-
cers, the six men of the Catalonia volunteers,
who added themselves at San Diego, and some
friendly Indians, with spades, mattocks, crow-
bars, axes and other implements of pioneers, to
chop and open a passage whenever necessary.
After them followed the pack-train, divided into
four bands with the muleteers and a competent
number of garrison soldiers for their escort with
each band. In the rear guard with the rest of

Evidently an error; it should be July 14th.

the troops and friendly Indians came the cap-
tain, Don Fernando Rivera, convoying the
horse-herd and the mule herd for relays."

"It must be well considered that the marches
of these troops with such a train and with such
embarrassments thro' unknown lands and un-
used paths could not be long ones ; leaving aside
the other causes which obliged them to halt
and camp early in the afternoon, that is to say,
the necessity of exploring the land one day for
the next, so as to regulate them (the marches)
according to the distance of the watering-places
and to take in consequence the proper precau-
tions; setting forth again on special occasions
in the evening," after having given water to the
beasts in that same hour upon the sure informa-
tion that in the following stretch there was no
water or that the watering place was low, or the
pasture scarce. The restings were measured by
the necessity, every four days, more or less,
according to the extraordinary fatigue occa-
sioned by the greater roughness of the road,
the toil of the pioneers, or the wandering off oi
the beasts which were missing from the horse
herd and which it was necessary to seek by their
tracks. At other times, by the necessity of
humoring the sick, when there were any, and
with time there were many who yielded up their
strength to the continued fatigue, the excessive
heat and cruel cold. In the form and according
to the method related the Spaniards executed
their marches; traversing immense lands more
fertile and more pleasing in proportion as they
penetrated more to the north. Al! in general are
peopled with a multitude of Indians, who came
out to meet them and in some parts accompa-
nied them from one stage of the journey to the
next; a folk very docile and tractable chiefly
from San Diego onward."

Constanso's description of the Indians of
Santa Barbara will be found in the chapter on the
'Aborigines of California." "From the chan-
nel of Santa Barbara onward the lands are not
so populous nor the Indians so industrious, but
they are equally affable and tractable. The
Spaniards pursued their voyage without opposi-
tion up to the Sierra of Santa Lucia, which they
contrived to cross with much hardship. At the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

foot of said Sierra on the north side is to be
found the port of Monterey, according to an-
cient reports, between the Point of Pines and
that of Aho Nuevo (New Year). The Spaniards
caught sight of said points on the 1st of October
of the year '69, and, believing they had arrived
at the end of their voyage, the commandant sent
the scouts forward to reconnoitre the Point of
Pines; in whose near vicinity lies said Port in

36 degrees and 40 minutes North Latitude. But
the scant tokens and equivocal ones which are
given of it by the Pilot Cabrera Bueno, the only
clue of this voyage, and the character of this
Port, which rather merits the name of Bay,
being spacious (in likeness to that of Cadiz),
not corresponding With ideas which it is natural
to form in reading the log of the aforemen-
tioned Cabrera Bueno, nor with the latitude of

37 degrees in which he located it, the scouts were
persuaded that the Port must be farther to the
north and they returned to the camp which our
people occupied with the report that what they
sought was not to be seen in those parts."

They decided that the Port was still further
north and resumed their march. Seventeen of
their number were sick with the scurvy, some of
whom, Constanso says, seemed to be in their
last extremity; these had to be carried in lit-
ters. To add to their miseries, the rains began
in the latter part of October, and with them
came an epidemic of diarrhea, "which spread to
all without exception; and it came to be feared
that this sickness which prostrated their powers
and left the persons spiritless, would finish with
the expedition altogether. But it turned out
quite to the contrary."' Those afflicted with the
scurvy began to mend and in a short time they
were restored to health. Constanso thus describes
the discovery of the Bay of San Francisco:
"The last day of October the Expedition by land
came in sight of Punta de Los Reyes and the
Farallones of the Port of San Francisco, whose
landmarks, compared with those related by
the log of the Pilot Cabrera Bueno, were found
exact. Thereupon it became of evident knowl-
edge that the Port of Monterey had been left
behind; there being few who stuck to the
contrary opinion. Nevertheless the comman-
dant resolved to send to reconnoitre the

land as far as Point de los Reyes. The scouts
who were commissioned for this purpose found
themselves obstructed by immense estuaries,
which run extraordinarily far back into the land
and were obliged to make great detours to get
around the heads of these. * * * Having
arrived at the end of the first estuary and recon-
noitered the land that would have to be followed
to arrive at the Point de Los Reyes, interrupted
with new estuaries, scant pasturage and fire-
wood and ha zing recognized, besides this, the
uncertainty of the news and the misapprehen-
sion the scouts had labored under, the com-
mandant, with the advice of his officers, resolved
upon a retreat to the Point of Pines in hopes of
finding the Port of Monterey and encountering
in it the Packet San Jose or the San Antonia,
whjse succor already was necessary; since of
the provisions which had been taken in San
Diego no more remained than some few sacks of
flour of which a short ration was issued to each
individual daily."

"On the eleventh day of November was put
into execution the retreat in search of Mon-
terey. The Spaniards reached said port and
the Point of Pines on the 28th of Novem-
ber. They maintained themselves in this place
until the 10th of December without any ves-
sel having appeared in this time. For which
reason and noting also a lack of victuals, and
that the sierra of Santa Lucia was covering
itself with snow, the commandant, Don Gaspar
de Portola, saw himself obliged to decide to
continue the retreat unto San Diego, leaving
it until a better occasion to return to the enter-
prise. On this retreat the Spaniards experi-
enced some hardships and necessities, because
they entirely lacked provisions, and because the
long marches, which necessity obliged to make
to reach San Diego, gave no time for seeking
sustenance by the chase, nor did game abound
equally everywhere. At this juncture they killed
twelve mules of the pack-train on whose meat
the folk nourished themselves unto San Diego,
at which new establishment they arrived, all in
health, on the 24th of January, 1770."

The San Jose, the third ship fitted out by
Visitador-General Galvez, and which Governor
Portola expected to find in the Bay of Monte-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

I'.i

Tey, sailed from San Jose del Cabo in May,
1770, with supplies and a double crew to sup-
ply the loss of sailors on the other vessels, but
nothing was ever heard of her afterwards. Pro-
visions were running low at San Diego, no ship
had arrived, and Governor Portola had decided
to abandon the place and return to Loreto.
Father Junipero was averse to this and prayed
unceasingly for the intercession of Saint Joseph,
the patron of the expedition. A novena or nine
days' public prayer was instituted to terminate
with a grand ceremonial on March 19th, which
was the saint's own day. But on the 23rd of
March, when all were ready to depart, the
packet San Antonia arrived. She had sailed
from San Bias the 20th of December. She en-
countered a storm which drove her four hun-
dred leagues from the coast; then she made
land in 35 degrees north latitude. Turning her
prow southward, she ran down to Point Concep-
cion, where at an anchorage in the Santa Bar-
bara channel the captain, Perez, took on water
and learned from the Indians of the return of
Portola's expedition. The vessel then ran down
to San Diego, where its opportune arrival
prevented the abandonment of that settle-
ment.

With an abundant supply of provisions and a
vessel to carry the heavier articles needed in
forming a settlement at Monterey, Portola or-
ganized a second expedition. This time he took
with him only twenty soldiers and one officer,
Lieutenant Pedro Fages. He set out from San
Diego on the 17th of April and followed his trail
made the previous year. Father Serra and the
engineer, Constanso, sailed on the San Antonia,
which left the port of San Diego on the 16th of
April. The land expedition reached Monterey
on the 23d of May and the San Antonia on the
31st of the same month. On the 3d of June,
1770, the mission of San Carlos Borromeo de
Monterey was formally founded with solemn
church ceremonies, accompanied by the ringing
of bells, the crack of musketry and the roar of
cannon. Father Serra conducted the church
services. Governor Portola took possession of
the land in the name of King Carlos III. A
presidio or fort of palisades was built and a few
huts erected. Portola, having formed the nu-
cleus of a settlement, turned over the command
of the territory to Lieutenant Fages. On the
9th of July, 1770, he sailed on the San Antonia
for San Bias. He never returned to Alta Cali-
fornia.

CHAPTER IV.

ABORIGINES OF CALIFORNIA.

WHETHER the primitive California In-
dian was the low and degraded being
that some modern writers represent
him to have been, admits of doubt. A mis-
sion training continued through three gen-
erations did not elevate him in morals at least.
When freed from mission restraint and brought
in contact with the white race he lapsed into a
condition more degraded and more debased than
that in which the missionaries found him.
Whether it was the inherent fault of the Indian
or the fault of his training is a question that is
useless to discuss now. If we are to believe the
accounts of the California Indian given by Vis-
caino and Constanso, who saw him before he
4

had come in contact with civilization he was not
inferior in intelligence to the nomad aborigines
of the country east of the Rocky mountains.

Sebastian Viscaino thus describes the In-
dians he found on the shores of Monterey Bay
three hundred years ago:

"The Indians are of good stature and fair
complexion, the women being somewhat less in
size than the men and of pleasing countenance.
The clothing of the people of the coast lands
consists of the skins of the sea-wolves (otter)
abounding there, which they tan and dress bet-
ter than is done in Castile; they possess also,
in great quantity, flax like that of Castile, hemp
and cotton, from which they make fishing-lines

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and nets for rabbits and hares. They have ves-
sels of pine wood very well made, in which they
go to sea with fourteen paddle men on a side
with great dexterity, even in stormy weather."

Indians who could construct boats of pine
boards that took twenty-eight paddle men to
row were certainly superior in maritime craft
to the birch bark canoe savages of the east.
We might accuse Viscaino, who was trying to
induce King Philip III. to found a colony on
Monterey Bay. of exaggeration in regard to
the Indian boats were not his statements con-
firmed by the engineer, Miguel Constanso, who
accompanied Portola's expedition one hundred
and sixty-seven years after Viscaino visited the
coast. Constanso, writing of the Indians of the
Santa Barbara Channel, says, "The dexterity
and skill of these Indians is surpassing in the
construction of their launches made of pine
planking. They are from eight to ten varas
(twenty-three to twenty-eight feet) in length,
including their rake and a vara and a half (four
feet three inches) beam. Into their fabric enters
no iron whatever, of the use of which they know
little. But they fasten the boards with firmness,
one to another, working their drills just so far
apart and at a distance of an inch from the edge,
the holes in the upper boards corresponding
with those in the lower, and through these holes
they pass strong lashings of deer sinews. They
pitch and calk the seams, and paint the whole
in sightly colors. They handle the boats with
equal cleverness, and three or four men go out
to sea to fish in them, though they have capacity
to carry eight or ten. They use long oars with
two blades and row with unspeakable lightness
and velocity. They know all the arts of fishing,
and fish abound along their coasts as has been
said of San Diego. They have communication
and commerce with the natives of the islands,
whence they get the beads of coral which are
current in place of money through these lands,
although they hold in more esteem the glass
beads which the Spaniards gave them, and of-
fered in exchange for these whatever they had
like trays, otter skins, baskets and wooden
plates. * * *

"They are likewise great hunters. To kill
deer and antelope they avail themselves of an

admirable ingenuity. They preserve the hide
of the head and part of the neck of some one
of these animals, skinned with care and leaving
the horns attached to the same hide, which they
stuff with grass or straw to keep its shape.
They put this said shell like a cap upon the head
and go forth to the woods with this rare equip-
age. On sighting the deer or antelope they go^
dragging themselves along the ground little by
little with the left hand. In the right they carry
the bow and four arrows. They lower and raise
the head, moving it to one side and the other,
and making other demonstrations so like these
animals that they attract them without difficulty
to the snare; and having them within a short
distance, they discharge their arrows at them
with certainty of hitting."

In the two chief occupations of the savage,
hunting and fishing, the Indians of the Santa
Barbara Channel seem to have been the equals
if not the superiors of their eastern brethren.
In the art of war they were inferior. Their
easy conquest by the Spaniards and their tame
subjection to mission rule no doubt had much
to do with giving them a reputation for infe-
riority.

The Indians of the interior valleys and those
of the coast belonged to the same general fam-
ily. There were no great tribal divisions like
those that existed among the Indians east of the
Rocky mountains. Each rancheria was to a
certain extent independent of all others, al-
though at times they were known to combine
for war or plunder. Although not warlike, they
sometimes resisted the whites in battle with
great bravery. Each village had its own terri-
tory in which to hunt and fish and its own sec-
tion in which to gather nuts, seeds and herbs.
While their mode of living was somewhat no-
madic they seem to have had a fixed location for
their rancherias.

The early Spanish settlers of California and
the mission padres have left but very meager
accounts of the manners, customs, traditions,
government and religion of the aborigines. The
padres were too intent upon driving out the oler
religious beliefs of the Indian and instilling ne>i
ones to care much what the aborigine had for-
merly believed or what traditions or myth* \b

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

had inherited from his ancestors. They ruth-
lessly destroyed his fetiches and his altars
wherever they found them, regarding them as
inventions of the devil.

The best account that has come down to us
of the primitive life of the Southern California
aborigines is found in a series of letters written
by Hugo Reid and published in the Los An-
geles Star in 1851-52. Reid was an educated
Scotchman, who came to Los Angeles in 1834.
He married an Indian woman, Dona Victoria, a
neophyte of the San Gabriel mission. She was
the daughter of an Indian chief. It is said that
Reid had been crossed in love by some high
toned Spanish sehorita and married the Indian
woman because she had the same name as his
lost love. It is generally believed that Reid was
the putative father of Helen Hunt Jackson's
heroine, Ramona.

From these letters, now in the possession of
the Historical Society of Southern California,
I briefly collate some of the leading character-
istics of the Southern Indians:

GOVERNMENT.

"Before the Indians belonging to the greater
part of this country were known to the whites
they comprised, as it were, one great family
under distinct chiefs ; they spoke nearly the same
language, with the exception of a few words,
and were more to be distinguished by a local
intonation of the voice than anything else. Be-
ing related by blood and marriage war was
never carried on between them. When war was
consequently waged against neighboring tribes
of no affinity it was a common cause."

"The government of the people was invested
in the hands of their chiefs, each captain com-
manding his own lodge. The command was
hereditary in a family. If the right line of de-
scent ran out they elected one of the same kin
nearest in blood. Laws in general were made
as required, with some few standing ones. Rob-
bery was never known among them. Murder
was of rare occurrence and punished with death.
Incest was likewise punished with death, being
held in such abhorrence that marriages between
kinsfolk were not allowed. The manner of put-
ting to death was by shooting the delinquent

with arrows. If a quarrel ensued between two
parties the chief of the lodge took cognizance
in the case and decided according to the testi-
mony produced. But if a quarrel occurred
between parties of distinct lodges, each chief
heard the witnesses produced by his own people,
and then, associated with the chief of the oppo-
site side, they passed sentence. In case the)
could not agree an impartial chief was called in,
who heard the statements made by both and he
alone decided. There was no appeal from his de-
cision. Whipping was never resorted to as a
punishment. All fines and sentences consisted in
delivering shells, money, food and skins."

RELIGION.

"They believed in one God, the Maker and
Creator of all things, whose name was and is
held so sacred among them as hardly ever to be
used, and when used only in a low voice. That
name is Qua-o-ar. When they have to use the
name of the supreme being on an ordinary oc-
casion they substitute in its stead the word
Y-yo-ha-rory-nain or the Giver of Life. They
have only one word to designate life and
soul."

"The world was at one time in a state of chaos,
until God gave it its present formation, fixing
it on the shoulders of seven giants, made ex-
pressly for this end. They have their names,
and when they move themselves an earthquake
is the consequence. Animals were then formed,
and lastly man and woman were formed, separ-
ately from earth and ordered to live together.
The man's name was Tobahar and the woman's
Probavit. God ascended to Heaven immediately
afterward, where he receives the souls of all who
die. They had no bad spirits connected with
their creed, and never heard of a 'devil' or a
'hell' until the coming of the Spaniards. They
believed in no resurrection whatever "

MARRIAGE.

"Chiefs had one, two or three wives, as their
inclination dictated, the subjects only one. When
a person wished to marry and had selected a
suitable partner, he advertised the same to all
his relatives, even to the nineteenth cousin. On
a day appointed the male portion of the lodge

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

brought in a collection of money beads. All the
relations having come in with their share,
they (the males) proceeded in a body to the resi-
dence of the bride, to whom timely notice had
been given. All of the bride's female relations
had been assembled and the money was equally
divided among them, the bride receiving noth-
ing, as it was a sort of purchase. After a few
days the bride's female relations returned the
compliment by taking to the bridegroom's
dwelling baskets of meal made of chia, which
was distributed among the male relatives. These
preliminaries over, a day was fixed for the cere-
mony, which consisted in decking out the bride
in innumerable strings of beads, paint, feathers
and skins. On being ready she was taken up
in the arms of one of her strongest male rela-
tives, who carried her, dancing, towards her
lover's habitation. All of her family, friends and
neighbors accompanied, dancing around, throw-
ing: food and edible seeds at her feet at every
step. These were collected in a scramble by the
spectators as best they could. The relations
of the bridegroom met them half way, and, tak-
ing the bride, carried her themselves, joining in
the ceremonious walking dance. On arriving at
the bridegroom's (who was sitting within his
hut) she was inducted into her new residence by
being placed alongside of her husband, while
baskets of seeds were liberally emptied on their
heads to denote blessings and plenty. This was
likewise scrambled for by the spectators, who,
on gathering up all the bride's seed cake, de-
parted, leaving them to enjoy their honeymoon
according to usage. A grand dance was given
on the occasion, the warriors doing the danc-
ing, the young women doing the singing. The
wife never visited her relatives from that day
forth, although they were at liberty to visit her."

BURIALS.

"When a person died all the kin collected to
mourn his or her loss. Each one had his own
peculiar mode of crying or howling, as easily dis-
tinguished the one from the other as one song
is from another. After lamenting awhile a
mourning dirge was sung in a low whining tone,
accompanied by a shrill whistle produced by
blowing into the tube of a deer's leg bone.

Dancing can hardly be said to have formed a
part of the rites, as it was merely a monotonous
action of the foot on the ground. This was con-
tinued alternately until the body showed signs
of decay, when it was wrapped in the covering
used in life. The hands were crossed upon the
breast and the body tied from head to foot. A
grave having been dug in their burial ground,
the body was deposited with seeds, etc., accord-
ing to the means of the family. If the deceased
were the head of the family or a favorite son,
the hut in which he lived was burned up, as
likewise were all his personal effects."

FEUDS — THE SONG FIGHTS.

"Animosity between persons or families was
of long duration, particularly between those of
different tribes. These feuds descended from
father to son until it was impossible to tell of
how many generations. They were, however,
harmless in themselves, being merely a war of
songs, composed and sung against the conflict-
ing party, and they were all of the most obscene
and indecent language imaginable. There are
two families at this day (185 1) whose feud com-
menced before the Spaniards were ever dreamed
of and they still continue singing and dancing
against each other. The one resides at the mis-
sion of San Gabriel and the other at San Juan
Capistrano; they both lived at San Bernardino
when the quarrel commenced. During the sing-
ing they continue stamping on the ground to
express the pleasure they would derive from
tramping on the graves of their foes. Eight days
was the duration of the song fight."

UTENSILS.

"From the bark of nettles was manufactured
thread for nets, fishing lines, etc. Needles, fish-
hooks, awls and many other articles were made
of either bone or shell; for cutting up meat a
knife of cane was invariably used. Mortars and
pestles were made of granite. Sharp stones and
perseverance were the only things used in their
manufacture, and so skillfully did they combine
the two that their work was always remarkably
uniform. Their pots to cook in were made of
soapstone of about an inch in thickness and
procured from the Indians of Santa Catalina.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Their baskets, made out of a certain species of
rush, were used only for dry purposes, although
they were water proof. The vessels in use for
liquids were roughly made of rushes and plas-
tered outside and in with bitumen or pitch."

INDIANS OF THE SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL.

Miguel Constanso, the engineer who accom-
panied Portola's expedition in 1769, gives us the
best description of the Santa Barbara Indians
extant.

"The Indians in whom was recognized more
vivacity and industry are those that inhabit the
islands and the coast of the Santa Barbara
channel. They live in pueblos (villages) whose
houses are of spherical form in the fashion of a
half orange covered with rushes. They are up
to twenty varas (fifty-five feet) in diameter. Each
house contains three or four families. The
hearth is in the middle and in the top of the
house they leave a vent or chimney to give exit
for the smoke. In nothing did these gentiles
give the lie to the affability and good treatment
which were experienced at their hands in other
times (1602) by the Spaniards who landed upon,
those coasts with General Sebastian Vizcayno.
They are men and women of good figure and as-
pect, very much given to painting and staining
their faces and bodies with red ochre.

"They use great head dresses of feathers and
some panderellas (small darts) which they bind
up amid their hair with various trinkets and
beads of coral of various colors. The men go
entirely naked, but in time of cold they sport
some long capes of tanned skins of nutrias (ot-
ters) and some mantles made of the same skins
cut in long strips, which they twist in such a
manner that all the fur remains outside; then
they weave these strands one with another,
forming a weft, and give it the pattern referred
to.

"The women go with more decency, girt
about the waist with tanned skins of deer which
cover them in front and behind more than half
down the leg, and with a mantelet of nutria over
the body. There are some of them with good
features. These are the Indian women who
make the trays and vases of rushes, to which
they give a thousand different forms and grace-

ful patterns, according to the uses to which they
are destined, whether it be for eating, drinking,
guarding their seeds, or for other purposes; for
these peoples do not know the use of earthen
ware as those of San Diego use it.

"The men work handsome trays of wood, with
finer inlays of coral or of bone; and some vases
of much capacity, closing at the mouth, which
appear to be made with a lathe — and with this
machine they would not come out better hol-
lowed nor of more perfect form. They give the
whole a luster which appears the finished handi-
work of a skilled artisan. The large vessels
which hold water are of a very strong weave of
rushes pitched within ; and they give them the
same form as our water jars.

"To eat the seeds which they use in place of
bread they toast them first in great trays, put-
ting among the seeds some pehbles or small
stones heated until red; then they move and
shake the tray so it may not burn; and getting
the seed sufficiently toasted they grind it in mor-
tars or almireses of stone. Some of these mor-
tars were of extraordinary size, as well wrought
as if they had had for the purpose the best steel
tools. The constancy, attention to trifles, and
labor which they employ in finishing these pieces
are well worthy of admiration. The mortars arc
so appreciated among themselves that for those
who, dying, leave behind such handiworks, they
are wont to place them over the spot where they
are buried, that the memory of their skill and
application may not be lost.

"They inter their dead. They have their cem-
eteries within the very pueblo. The funerals of
their captains they make with great pomp, and
set up over their bodies some rods or poles, ex-
tremely tall, from which they hang a variety of
utensils and chattels which were used by them.
They likewise put in the same place some great
planks of pine, with various paintings and fig-
ures in wdiich without doubt they explain the
exploits and prowesses of the personage.

"Plurality of wives is not lawful among these
peoples. Only the captains have a right to
marry two. In all their pueblos the attention
was taken by a species of men who lived like the
women, kept company with them, dressed in the
same garb, adorned themselves with beads, pen-

HISTORICAL

A XI)

BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

dants, necklaces and other womanish adorn-
ments, and enjoyed great consideration among
the people. The lack of an interpreter did not
permit us to find out what class of men they
were, or to what ministry they were destined,
though all suspect a defect in sex, or some
abuse among those gentiles.

"In their houses the married couples have
their separate beds on platforms elevated from
the ground. Their mattresses are some simple
petates (mats) of rushes and their pillows are
of the same petates rolled up at the head of the
bed. All these beds are hung about with like
mats, which serve for decency and protect from
the cold."

From the descriptions given by Viscaino and
Constanso of the coast Indians they do not ap-
pear to have been the degraded creatures that
some modern writers have pictured them. In
mechanical ingenuity they were superior to the
Indians of the Atlantic seaboard or those of the
Mississippi valley. Much of the credit that has
been given to the mission padres for the patient
training they gave the Indians in mechanical
arts should be given to the Indian himself. He
was no mean mechanic when the padres took
him in hand.

Bancroft says "the Northern California In-
dians were in every way superior to the central
and southern tribes." The difference was more
in climate than in race. Those of Northern Cal-
ifornia living in an invigorating climate were
more active and more warlike than their
sluggish brethren of the south. They gained
their living by hunting larger game than
those of the south whose subsistence was derived
mostly from acorns, seeds, small game and fish.
Those of the interior valleys of the north were
of lighter complexion and had better forms and
features than their southern kinsmen. They
were divided into numerous small tribes or
clans, like those of central and Southern Cali-
fornia. The Spaniards never penetrated very
far into the Indian country of the north and
consequently knew little or nothing about the
habits and customs of the aborigines there.
After the discovery of gold the miners invaded
their country in search of the precious metal.
The Indians at first were not hostile, but ill

treatment soon made them so. When they re-
taliated on the whites a war of extermination
was waged against them. Like the mission In-
dians of the south they are almost extinct.

All of the coast Indians seem to have had
some idea of a supreme being. The name dif-
fered with the different tribes. According to
Hugo Reid the god of the San Gabriel Indian
was named Quaoar. Father Boscana, who
wrote "A Historical Account of the Origin,
Customs and Traditions of the Indians" at the
missionary establishment of San Juan Capis-
trano, published in Alfred Robinson's "Life in
California," gives a lengthy account of the relig-
ion of those Indians before their conversion to
Christianity. Their god was Chinigchinich. Evi-
dently the three old men from whom Boscana
derived his information mixed some of the
religious teachings of the padres with their
own primitive beliefs, and made up for the father
a nondescript religion half heathen and half
Christian. Boscana was greatly pleased to find
so many allusions to Scriptural truths, evidently
never suspecting that the Indians were imposing
upon him.

The religious belief of the Santa Barbara
Channel Indians appears to have been the most
rational of any of the beliefs held by the Cali-
fornia aborigines. Their god, Chupu, was the
deification of good; and Nunaxus, their Satan,
the personification of evil. Chupu the all-powerful
created Nunaxus, who rebelled against his cre-
ator and tried to overthrow him; but Chupu, the
almighty, punished him by creating man who, by
devouring the animal and vegetable products of
the earth, checked the physical growth of
Nunaxus, who had hoped by liberal feeding to
become like unto a mountain. Foiled in his am-
bition, Nunaxus ever afterwards sought to in-
jure mankind. To secure Chupu's protection,
offerings were made to him and dances were
instituted in his honor. Flutes and other in-
struments were played to attract his attention.
When Nunaxus brought calamity upon the In-
dians in the shape of dry years, which caused a
dearth of animal and vegetable products, or sent
sickness to afflict them, their old men interceded
with Chupu to protect them; and to exorcise
their Satan they shot arrows and threw

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

stones in the direction in which he was sup-
posed to be.

Of the Indian myths and traditions Hugo
Reid says: "They were of incredible length
and contained more metamorphoses than Ovid
could have engendered in his brain had he lived
a thousand years."

The Cahuilla tribes who formerly inhabited
the mountain districts of the southeastern part
of the state had a tradition of their creation. Ac-
cording to this tradition the primeval Adam and
Eve were created by the Supreme Being in the
waters of a northern sea. They came up out
of the water upon the land, which they found to
be soft and miry. They traveled southward for
many moons in search of land suitable for their
residence and where they could obtain susten-
ance from the earth. This they found at last on
the mountain sides in Southern California.

Some of the Indian myths when divested of
their crudities and ideas clothed in fitting
language are as poetical as those of Greece or
Scandinavia. The following one which Hugo
Reid found among the San Gabriel Indians
bears a striking resemblance to the Grecian
myths of Orpheus and Eurydice but it is not at
all probable that the Indians ever heard the
Grecian fable. Ages ago, so runs this Indian
myth, a powerful people dwelt on the banks of
the Arroyo Seco and hunted over the hills and
plains of what are now our modern Pasadena
and the valley of San Fernando. They com-
mitted a grievous crime against the Great Spirit.
A pestilence destroyed them all save a boy and
girl who were saved by a foster mother pos-
sessed of supernatural powers. They grew to
manhood and womanhood and became husband
and wife. Their devotion to each other angered
the foster mother, who fancied herself neglected.
She plotted to destroy the wife. The young
woman, divining her fate, told her husband that
should he at any time feel a tear drop on his
shoulder, he might know that she was dead.
While he was away hunting the dread signal
came. He hastened back to destroy the hag who
had brought death to his wife, but the sorceress
had escaped. Disconsolate he threw himself on
the grave of his wife. For three days he neither
ate nor drank. On the third day a whirlwind

arose from the grave and moved toward the
south. Perceiving in it the form of his wife, he
hastened on until he overtook it. Then a voi e
came out of the cloud saying: "Whither I go,
thou canst not come. Thou art of earth but I
am dead to the world. Return, my husband,
return!" He plead piteously to be taken with
her. She consenting, he was wrapt in the cloud
with her and borne across the illimitable sea that
separates the abode of the living from that of
the dead. When they reached the realms of
ghosts a spirit voice said: "Sister, thou come'st
to us with an odor of earth ; what dost thou
bring?" Then she confessed that she ha 1
brought her living husband. "Take him away!"
said a voice stern and commanding. She plead
that he might remain and recounted his many
virtues. To test his virtues, the spirits gave him
four labors. First to bring a feather from the
top of a pole so high that its summit was in-
visible. Next to split a hair of great length and
exceeding fineness; third to make on the ground
a map of the constellation of the lesser bear and
locate the north star and last to slay the celestial
deer that had the form of black beetles and were
exceedingly swift. With the aid of his wife he
accomplished all the tasks.

But no mortal was allowed to dwell in the
abodes of death. "Take thou thy wife and re-
turn with her to the earth," said the spirit. "Yet
remember, thou shalt not speak to her: thou
shalt not touch her until three suns have passed.
A penalty awaits thy disobedience." He prom-
ised. They pass from the spirit land and travel
to the confines of matter. By day she is invis-
ible but by the flickering light of his camp-fire
he sees the dim outline of her form. Three days
pass. As the sun sinks behind the western hills
he builds his camp-fire. She appears before
him in all the beauty of life. He stretches forth
his arms to embrace her. She is snatched from
his grasp. Although invisible to him yet the
upper rim of the great orb of day hung above
the western verge. He had broken his prom-
ise. Like Orpheus, disconsolate, he wandered
over the earth until, relenting, the spirits sent
their servant Death to bring him to Tccupar
(Heaven).

The following myth of the mountain Indians

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

of the north bears a strong resemblance to the
Norse fable of Gyoll the River of Death and its
glittering bridge, over which the spirits of the
dead pass to Hel, the land of spirits. The In-
dian, however, had no idea of any kind of a
bridge except a foot log across a stream. The
myth in a crude form was narrated to me many
years ago by an old pioneer.

According to this myth when an Indian died
his spirit form was conducted by an unseen
guide over a mountain trail unknown and inac-
cessible to mortals, to the rapidly flowing river
which separated the abode of the living from
that of the dead. As the trail descended to the
river it branched to the right and left. The right
hand path led to a foot bridge made of the mas-

sive trunk of a rough barked pine which spanned
the Indian styx; the left led to a slender, fresh
peeled birch pole that hung high above the roar-
ing torrent. At the parting of the trail an in-
exorable fate forced the bad to the left, while
the spirit form of the good passed on to the
right and over the rough barked pine to the
happy hunting grounds, the Indian heaven. Th
bad reaching the river's brink and gazing long
ingly upon the delights beyond, essayed to cross
the slippery pole — a slip, a slide, a clutch at
empty space, and the ghostly spirit form was
hurled into the mad torrent below, and was
borne by the rushing waters into a vast lethean
lake where it sunk beneath the waves and was
blotted from existence forever.

CHAPTER V.

FRANCISCAN MISSIONS OF ALTA CALIFORNIA.

San Diego de Alcala'.

THE two objective points chosen by Vis-
itador General Galvez and President
Junipero Serra to begin the spiritual
conquest and civilization of the savages of Alta
California, were San Diego and Monterey. The
expeditions sent by land and sea were all united
at San Diego July i, 1769. Father Serra lost no
time in beginning the founding of missions.
On the 16th of July, 1769, he founded the mis-
sion of San Diego de Alcala. It was the first
link in the chain of missionary establishments
that eventually stretched northward from San
Diego to Solano, a distance of seven hundred
miles, a chain that was fifty-five years in forging.
The first site of the San Diego mission was at
a place called by the Indians "Cosoy." It was
located near the presidio established by Gov-
ernor Portola before he set out in search of
Monterey. The locality is now known as Old
Town.

Temporary buildings were erected here, but
the location proving unsuitable, in August,
1774, the mission was removed about two
leagues up the San Diego river to a place called
by the natives "Nipaguay." Here a dwelling for

the padres, a store house, a smithy and a
wooden church 18x57 ^eet were erected.

The mission buildings at Cosoy were given
up to the presidio except two rooms, one for
the visiting priests and the other for a temporary
store room for mission supplies coming by sea.
The missionaries had been fairly successful in
the conversions of the natives and some prog-
ress had been made in teaching them to labor.
On the night of November 4, 1775, without any
previous warning, the gentiles or unconverted
Indians in great numbers attacked the mission.
One of the friars, Fray Funster, escaped to the
soldiers' quarters ; the other, Father Jaume, was
killed by the savages. The blacksmith also was
killed; the carpenter succeeded in reaching the
soldiers. The Indians set fire to the buildings
which were nearly all of wood. The soldiers, the
priest and carpenter were driven into a small
adobe building that had been used as a kitchen.
Two of the soldiers were wounded. The cor-
poral, one soldier and the carpenter were all
that were left to hold at bay a thousand howl-
ing fiends. The corporal, who was a sharp
shooter, did deadly execution on the savages.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

5 1

Father Funster saved the defenders from being
blown to pieces by the explosion of a fifty pound
sack of gunpowder. He spread his cloak over
the sack and sat on it, thus preventing the pow-
der from being ignited by the sparks of the
burning building. The fight lasted till daylight,
when the hostiles fled. The Christian Indians
who professed to have been coerced by the sav-
ages then appeared and made many protesta-
tions of sorrow at what had happened. The mili-
tary commander was not satisfied that they were
innocent but the padres believed them. New
buildings were erected at the same place, the
soldiers of the presidio for a time assisting the
Indians in their erection.

The mission was fairly prosperous. In 1800
the cattle numbered 6,960 and the agricultural
products amounted to 2,600 bushels. From
1769 to 1834 there were 6,638 persons baptized
and 4,428 buried. The largest number of cat-
tle possessed by the mission at one time was
9,245 head in 1822. The old building now stand-
ing on the mission site at the head of the valley
is the third church erected there. The first,
built of wood and roofed with tiles, was erected
in 1774; the second, built of adobe, was com-
pleted in 1780 (the walls of this were badly
cracked by an earthquake in 1803); the third was
begun in 1808 and dedicated November 12,
1813. The mission was secularized in 1834.

SAN CARLOS DE B0RR0ME0.

As narrated in a former chapter, Governor
Portola, who with a small force had set out from
San Diego to find Monterey Bay, reached that
port May 24, 1770. Father Serra, who came
up by sea on the San Antonia, arrived at the
same place May 31. All things being in readi-
ness the Presidio of Monterey and the mission
of San Carlos de Borromeo were founded on
the same day — June 3, 1770. The boom of ar-
tillery and the roar of musketry accompani-
ments to the service of the double founding
frightened the Indians away from the mission
and it was some time before the savages could
muster courage to return. In June, I771- tne
site of the mission was moved to the Carmelo
river. This was done by Father Serra to re-
move the neophytes from the contaminating in-

fluence of the soldiers at the presidio. The erec-
tion of the stone church still standing was be-
gun in 1793. It was completed and dedicated
in 1797. The largest neophyte population at
San Carlos was reached in 1794, when it num-
bered nine hundred and seventy-one. Between
1800 and 1810 it declined to seven hundred and
forty-seven. In 1820 the population had de-
creased to three hundred and eighty-one and
at the end of the next decade it had fallen to
two hundred and nine. In 1834, when the de-
cree of secularization was put in force, there were
about one hundred and fifty neophytes at the
mission. At the rate of decrease under mission
rule, a few more years would have pro-
duced the same result that secularization did,
namely, the extinction of the mission Indian.

SAN ANTONIO DE PADUA.

The third mission founded in California was
San Antonio de Padua. It was located about
twenty-five leagues from Monterey. Here, on
the 14th of June, 1771, in La Canada de los
Robles, the canon of oaks beneath a shelter of
branches, Father Serra performed the services
of founding. The Indians seem to have been
more tractable than those of San Diego or Mon-
terey. The first convert was baptized one
month after the establishment of the mission.
San Antonio attained the highest limit of its
neophyte population in 1805, when it had
twelve hundred and ninety-six souls within its
fold. In 183 1 there were six hundred and sixty-
one Indians at or near the mission. In 1834. the
date of secularization, there were five hundred
and sixty-seven. After its disestablishment the
property of the mission was quickly squandered
through inefficient administrators. The build-
ings are in ruins.

SAN GABRIEL ARCANGEL.

San Gabriel Arcangel was the fourth mission
founded in California. Father Junipero Serra,
as previously narrated, had gone north in 1770
and founded the mission of San Carlos Bor-
romeo on Monterey Bay and the following year
he established the mission of San Antonio de
Padua on the Salinas river about twenty-five
leagues south of Monterey.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

On the 6th of August, 1771, a cavalcade of
soldiers and musketeers escorting Padres
Somero and Cambon set out from San Diego
over the trail made by Portola's expedition in
1769 (when it went north in search of Monterey
Bay) to found a new mission on the River Jesus
de los Temblores or to give it its full name, El
Rio del Dulcisimo Nombre de Jesus de los
Temblores, the river of the sweetest name of
Jesus of the Earthquakes. Not finding a suit-
able location on that river (now the Santa Ana)
they pushed on to the Rio San Miguel, also
known as the Rio de los Temblores. Here
they selected a site where wood and water were
abundant. A stockade of poles was built inclos-
ing a square within which a church was erected,
covered with boughs.

September 8, 1771. the mission was formally
founded and dedicated to the archangel Gabriel.
The Indians who at the coming of the Spaniards
were docile and friendly, a few days after the
founding of the mission suddenly attacked two
soldiers who were guarding the horses. One of
these soldiers had outraged the wife of the chief
who led the attack. The soldier who committed
the crime killed the chieftain with a musket ball
and the other Indians fled. The soldiers then
cut off the chief's head and fastened it to a pole
at the presidio gate. From all accounts the sol-
diers at this mission were more brutal and bar-
barous than the Indians and more in need of
missionaries to convert them than the Indians.
The progress of the mission was slow. At the
end of the second year only seventy-three chil-
dren and adults had been baptized. Father Serra
attributed the lack of conversions to the bad
conduct of the soldiers.

The first buildings at the mission Vieja were
all of wood. The church was 45x18 feet, built of
logs and covered with tule thatch. The church
and other wooden buildings used by the padres
stood within a square inclosed by pointed stakes.
In 1776, five years after its founding, the mis-
sion was moved from its first location to a new
site about a league distant from the old one.
The old site was subject to overflow by the
river. The adobe ruins pointed out to tourists
as the foundations of the old mission are the
debris of a building erected for a ranch house

about sixty years ago. The buildings at the
mission Vieja were all of wood and no trace of
them remains. A chapel was first built at the
new site. It was replaced by a church built of
adobes one hundred and eight feet long by
twenty-one feet wide. The present stone church,
begun about 1794, and completed about 1806,
is the fourth church erected.

The mission attained the acme of its impor-
tance in 1817, when there were seventeen hun-
dred and one neophytes in the mission fold.

The largest grain crop raised at any mission
was that harvested at San Gabriel in 1821, which
amounted to 29,400 bushels. The number ol cat-
tle belonging to the mission in 1830 was 25,725.
During the whole period of the mission's exist-
ence, i. e., from 1771 to 1834, according to sta-
tistics compiled by Bancroft from mission rec-
ords, the total number of baptisms was 7,854,
of which 4,355 were Indian adults and 2,459
were Indian children and the remainder gente de
razon or people of reason. The deaths were
5,656, of which 2,916 were Indian adults and
2,363 Indian children. If all the Indian children
born were baptized it would seem (if the sta-
tistics are correct) that but very few ever grew
up to manhood and womanhood. In 1834, the
year of its secularization, its neophyte popula-
tion was 1,320.

The missionaries of San Gabriel established
a station at old San Bernardino about 1820. It
w<as not an asistencia like pala, but merely an
agricultural station or ranch headquarters. The
buildings were destroyed by the Indians in 1834.

SAN LUIS OBISPO DE TOLOSA.

On his journey southward in 1782, President
Serra and Padre Cavalier, with a small escort of
soldiers and a few Lower California Indians, on
September 1, 1772, founded the mission of San
Luis Obispo de Tolosa (St. Louis, Bishop of
Tolouse). The site selected was on a creek
twenty-five leagues southerly from San An-
tonio. The soldiers and Indians were set at
work to erect buildings. Padre Cavalier was left
in charge of the mission, Father Serra continu-
ing his journey southward. This mission was
never a very important one. Its greatest popu-
lation was in 1803, when there were eight

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

hundred and fifty-two neophytes within its juris-
diction. From that time to 1834 their number
declined to two hundred and sixty-four. The
average death rate was 7.30 per cent of the pop-
ulation— a lower rate than at some of the more
populous missions. The adobe church built in
1793 is still in use, but has been so remodeled
that it bears but little resemblance to the church
of mission days.

SAN FRANCISCO DE ASIS.

The expedition under command of Portola
in 1769 failed to find Monterey Bay but it passed
on and discovered the great bay of San Fran-
cisco. So far no attempt had been made to
plant a mission or presidio on its shores. Early
in 1775, Lieutenant Ayala was ordered to ex-
plore the bay with a view to forming a settle-
ment near it. Rivera had previously explored
the land bordering on the bay where the city
now stands. Captain Anza, the discoverer of the
overland route from Mexico to California via
the Colorado river, had recruited an expedition
of two hundred persons in Sonora for the pur-
pose of forming a settlement at San Francisco.
He set out in 1775 and reached Monterey March
10, 1776. A quarrel between him and Rivera,
who was in command at Monterey, defeated for
a time the purpose for which the settlers had
been brought, and Anza, disgusted with the
treatment he had received from Rivera, aban-
doned the enterprise. Anza had selected a site
for a presidio at San Francisco. After his de-
parture Rivera changed his policy of delay that
had frustrated all of Anza's plans and decided at
lonce to proceed to the establishment of a pre-
sidio. The presidio was formally founded Sep-
tember 17, 1776, at what is now known as Fort
Point. The ship San Carlos had brought a num-
ber of persons; these with the settlers who had
:ome up from Monterey made an assemblage of
Tiore than one hundred and fifty persons.

After the founding of the presidio Lieutenant
Moraga in command of the military and Captain
Z)uiros of the San Carlos, set vigorously at work
o build a church for the mission. A wooden
milding having been constructed on the 9th of
Dctober, 1776, the mission was dedicated,
father Palou conducting the service, assisted by

Fathers Cambon, Nocedal and Pena. The site
selected for the mission was on the Laguna de
los Dolores. The lands at the mission were not
very productive. The mission, however, was
fairly prosperous. In 1820 it owned 11,240 cat-
tle and the total product of wheat was 1 14.480
bushels. In 1820 there were 1,252 neophytes
attached to it. The death rate was very heavy —
the average rate being 12.4 per cent of the pop-
ulation. In 1832 the population had decreased
to two hundred and four and at the time of
secularization it had declined to one hundred
and fifty. A number of neophytes had been
taken to the new mission of San Francisco So-
lano.

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO.

The revolt of the Indians at San Diego de-
layed the founding of San Juan Capistrano a
year. October 30, 1775, the initiatory services
of the founding had been held when a messenger
came with the news of the uprising of the sav-
ages and the massacre of Father Jaume and
others. The bells which had been hung on a
tree were taken down and buried. The soldiers
and the padres hastened to San Diego. Novem-
ber 1, 1776, Fathers Serra, Mugartcgui and
Amurrio, with an escort of soldiers, arrived at
the site formerly selected. The bells were dug up
and hung on a tree, an enramada of boughs was
constructed and Father Serra said mass. The
first location of the mission was several miles
northeasterly from the present site at the foot
of the mountain. The abandoned site is still
known a la Mision Vieja (the Old Mission).
Just when the change of location was made is
not known.

The erection of a stone church was begun in
February, 1797, and completed in 1806. A
master builder had been brought from Mexico
and under his superintendence the neophytes
did the mechanical labor. It was the largest and
handsomest church in California and was the
pride of mission architecture. The year 18 12
was known in California as el ano de los tem-
blores — the year of earthquakes. For months
the seismic disturbance was almost continuous.
On Sunday, December 8, 181 2, a severe shock
threw down the lofty church tower, which
crashed through the vaulted roof on the congre-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

gation below. The padre who was celebrating
mass escaped through the sacristy. Of the fifty
persons present only five or six escaped. The
church was never rebuilt. "There is not much
doubt," says Bancroft, "that the disaster was
clue rather to faulty construction than to the
violence of the temblor." The edifice was of the
usual cruciform shape, about 90x180 feet on
the ground, with very thick walls and arched
dome-like roof all constructed of stones imbed-
ded in mortar or cement. The stones were not
hew n, but of irregular size and shape, a kind of
structure evidently requiring great skill to en-
sure solidity. The mission reached its maxi-
mum in 1819; from that on till the date of its
secularization there was a rapid decline in the
numbers of its live stock and of its neophytes.

This was one of the missions in which Gov-
ernor Figueroa tried his experiment of forming
Indian pueblos of the neophytes. For a time
the experiment was a partial success, but even-
tually it went the way of all the other missions.
Its lands were granted to private individuals
and the neophytes scattered. Its picturesque
ruins are a great attraction to touiists.

SANTA CLARA.

The mission of Santa Clara was founded Jan-
uary 12, 1777. The site had been selected some
time before and two missionaries designated for
service at it, but the comandante of the terri-
tory, Rivera y Moncada, who was an exceed-
ingly obstinate person, had opposed the found-
ing on various pretexts, but posititve orders
coming from the viceroy Rivera did not longer
delay, so on the 6th of January, 1777, a detach-
ment of soldiers under Lieutenant Moraga, ac-
companied by Father Peha, was sent from San
Francisco to the site selected which was about
sixteen leagues south of San Francisco. Here
under an enramada the services of dedication
were held. The Indians were not averse to re-
ceiving a new religion and at the close of the
year sixty-seven had been baptized.

The mission was quite prosperous and be-
came one of the most important in the territory.
1 1 w as located in the heart of a rich agricul-
tural district. The total product of wheat was
175,800 bushels. In 1828 the mission flocks and

herds numbered over 30,000 animals. The

neophyte population in 1827 was 1,464. The

death rate was high, averaging 12.63 Per cent

of the population. The total number of bap-
tisms was 8,640; number of deaths 6,950. In

1834 the population had declined to 800.
Secularization was effected in 1837.

SAN BUENAVENTURA.

The founding of San Buenaventura had been
long delayed. It was to have been among the
first missions founded by Father Serra; it proved
to be his last. On the 26th of March, 1782,
Governor de Neve, accompanied by Father
Serra (who had come down afoot from San
Carlos), and Father Cambon, with a convoy of
soldiers and a number of neophytes, set out
from San Gabriel to found the mission. At the
first camping place Governor de Neve was re-
called to San Gabriel by a message from Col.
Pedro bages, informing him of the orders of the
council of war to proceed against the Yumas
who had the previous year destroyed the two
missions on the Colorado river and massacred
the missionaries.

On the 29th, the remainder of the company
reached a place on the coast named by Portola
in 1769, Asuncion de Nuestra Senora, which
had for some time been selected for a mission
site. Near it was a large Indian rancheria. On
Easter Sunday, March 31st, the mission was for-
mally founded with the usual ceremonies and
dedicated to San Buenaventura (Giovanni de
Fidanza of Tuscany), a follower of St. Francis,
the founder of the Franciscans.

The progress of the mission was slow at first,
only two adults were baptized in 1782, the
year of its founding. The first buildings built
of wood were destroyed by fire. The church
still used for service, built of brick and adobe,
was completed and dedicated, September 9, 1809.
The earthquake of December 8, 1812, damaged
the church to such an extent that the tower
and part of the facade had to be rebuilt. After
the earthquake the whole site of the mission
for a time seemed to be sinking. The inhabi-
tants, fearful of being engulfed by the sea, re-
moved to San Joaquin y Santa Ana, where they
remained several months. The mission at-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tained its greatest prosperity in 1816, when its
neophyte population numbered 1,330 and it
owned 23,400 cattle.

SANTA BARBARA.

Governor Felipe de Neve founded the presidio
of Santa Barbara April 21, 1782. Father Serra
had hoped to found the mission at the same time,
but in this he was disappointed. His death in
1784 still further delayed the founding and it
was not until the latter part of 1786 that every-
thing was in readiness for the establishing of
the new mission. On the 22d of November
Father Lasuen, who had succeeded Father
Serra as president of the missions, arrived at
Santa Barbara, accompanied by two missiona-
ries recently from Mexico. He selected a site
about a mile distant from the presidio. The
place was called Taynagan (Rocky Hill) by the
Indians. There was a plentiful supply of stone
|on the site for building and an abundance of
water for irrigation.

On the 15th of December, 1786, Father
i^asuen, in a hut of boughs, celebrated the first
Inass; but December 4, the day that the fiesta of
>anta Barbara is commemorated, is considered
he date of its founding. Part of the services
vere held on that day. A chapel built of adobes
nd roofed with thatch was erected in 1787. Sev-
ral other buildings of adobe were erected the
ame year. In 1788, tile took the place of
latch. In 1789, a second church, much larger
;ian the first, was built. A third church of adobe
as commenced in 1793 and finished in 1794.
. brick portico was added in 1795 and the walls
Mastered.

The great earthquake of December, 1812, de-
dished the mission church and destroyed

:arly all the buildings. The years 1813 and

!i4 were spent in removing the debris of the
: ined buildings and in preparing for the erec-
Dn of new ones. The erection of the present
lission church was begun in 1815. It was corn-
iced and dedicated September 10, 1820.

Father Caballeria, in his History of Santa
] .rbara, gives the dimensions of the church as
f lows: "Length (including walls), sixty varas;
\ dth, fourteen varas ; height, ten varas (a vara
i thirty-four inches)." The walls are of stone

and rest on a foundation of rock and cement
They are six feet thick and are further strength
ened by buttresses. Notwithstanding the build-
ing has withstood the storms of four score years,
it is still in an excellent state of preservation.
Its exterior has not been disfigured by attempts
at modernizing.

The highest neophyte population was reached
at Santa Barbara in 1803, when it numbered
1,792. The largest number of cattle was 5,200 in
1809. In 1834, the year of secularization, the
neophytes numbered 556, which was a decrease
of 155 from the number in 1830. At such a rate
of decrease it would not, even if mission rule
had continued, have taken more than a dozen
years to depopulate the mission.

LA PURISIMA COXCEPCIO.V.

Two missions, San Buenaventura and Santa
Barbara, had been founded on the Santa P,ar-
bara channel in accordance with Neve's report of
1777, in which he recommended the founding of
three missions and a presidio in that district.
It was the intention of General La Croix to con-
duct these on a different plan from that prevail-
ing in the older missions. The natives were not
to be gathered into a missionary establishment,
but were to remain in their ranchcrias. which
were to be converted into mission pueblos. The
Indians were to receive instruction in religion,
industrial arts and self-government while com-
paratively free from restraint. The plan which
no doubt originated with Governor de Neve,
was a good one theoretically, and possibly might
have been practically. The missionaries were
bitterly opposed to it. Unfortunately it was
tried first in the Colorado river missions among
the fierce and treacherous Yumas. The mas-
sacre of the padres and soldiers of these mis-
sions was attributed to this innovation.

In establishing the channel missions the mis-
sionaries opposed the inauguration of this plan
and by their persistence succeeded in setting it
aside; and the old system was adopted. La
Purisima Cohcepcion, or the Immaculate Con-
ception of the Blessed Virgin, the third of the
channel missions, was founded December 8,
1787. by Father Lasuen at a place called by the
natives Algsacupi. Its location is about twelve

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

miles from the ocean on the Santa Ynez river.
Three years after its founding three hundred
converts had been baptized but not all of them
lived at the mission. The first church was a
temporary structure. The second church, built
of adobe and roofed with tile, was completed in
1802. December 21, 1812, an earthquake de-
molished the church and also about one hundred
adobe houses of the neophytes. A site across
the river and about four miles distant from the
former one, was selected for new buildings. A
temporary building for a church was erected
there. A new church, built of adobe and roofed
with tile, was completed and dedicated in 1818.

The Indians revolted in 1824 and damaged
the building. They took possession of it and a
battle lasting four hours was fought between one
hundred and thirty soldiers and four hundred
Indians. The neophytes cut loop holes in the
church and used two old rusty cannon and a
few guns they possessed; but, unused to fire
arms, they were routed with the loss of several
killed. During the revolt which lasted several
months four white men and fifteen or twenty In-
dians were killed. The hostiles, most of whom
fled to the Tulares, were finally subdued. The
leaders were punished with imprisonment and
the others returned to their missions.

This mission's population was largest in 1804,
w hen it numbered 1,520. In 1834 there were but
407 neophytes connected with it. It was secular-
ized in February, 1835. During mission rule
from 1787 to 1834, the total number of Indian
children baptized was 1,492; died 902, which was
a lower death rate than at most of the southern
missions.

SANTA CRUZ.

Santa Cruz, one of the smallest of the twenty-
one missions of California, was founded Septem-
ber 25, 1790. The mission was never very pros-
perous. In 1798 many of the neophytes de-
serted and the same year a flood covered the
planting fields and damaged the church. In 1812
the neophytes murdered the missionary in
charge, Padre Andres Ouintana. They claimed
that he had treated them with great cruelty.
Five of those implicated in the murder received
two hundred lashes each and were sentenced to
work in chains from two to ten years. Only

one survived the punishment. The maximum
of its population was reached in 1798, when
there were six hundred and forty-four Indians
in the mission fold. The total number bap-
tized from the date of its founding to 1834 was
2,466; the total number of deaths was 2,034. The
average death rate was 10.93 per cent of the
population. At the time of its secularization in
1834 there were only two hundred and fifty In-
dians belonging to the mission.

LA SOLEDAD.

The mission of our Lady of Solitude was
founded September 29, 1791. The site selected
had borne the name Soledad (solitude) ever
since the first exploration of the country. The
location was thirty miles northeast of San Car-
los de Monterey. La Soledad, by which name
it was generally known, was unfortunate in its
early missionaries. One of them, Padre Gracia,
was supposed to be insane and the other, Padre
Rubi, was very immoral. Rubi was later on ex-
pelled from his college for licentiousness. At
the close of the century the mission had become
fairly prosperous, but in 1802 an epidemic broke
out and five or six deaths occurred daily. The
Indians in alarm fled from the mission. The
largest population of the mission was seven
hundred and twenty-five in 1805. At the time
of secularization its population had decreased to
three hundred. The total number of baptisms
during its existence was 2,222; number of deaths
1,803.

SAN JOSE.

St. Joseph had been designated by the visita-
dor General Galvez and Father Junipero Serra
as the patron saint of the mission colonization of
California. Thirteen missions had been founded
and yet none had been dedicated to San Jose.
Orders came from Mexico that one be estab-
lished and named for him. Accordingly a de-
tail of a corporal and five men, accompanied by
Father Lasuen, president of the missions, pro-
ceeded to the site selected, which was about
twelve miles northerly from the pueblo of San
Jose. There, on June 11, 1797, the mission was
founded. The mission was well located agricul-
turally and became one of the most prosperous
in California. In 1820 it had a population of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

1,754, the highest of any mission except San
Luis Rey. The total number of baptisms from
its founding to 1834 was 6,737; deaths 5,109.
Secularization was effected in 1836-37. The to-
tal valuation of the mission property, not in-
cluding lands or the church, was $155,000.

SAN JUAN BAUTISTA.

In May, 1797, Governor Borica ordered the
comandante at Monterey to detail a corporal
and five soldiers to proceed to a site that had
been previously chosen for a mission which was
about ten leagues northeast from Monterey.
Here the soldiers erected of wood a church,
priest's house, granary and guard house. June
24, 1797, President Lasuen, assisted by Fathers
Catala and Martiari, founded the mission of
San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist). At
the close of the year, eighty-five converts had
been baptized. The neighboring Indian tribes
were hostile and some of them had to be killed
before the others learned to behave themselves.
A new church, measuring 60x160 feet, was com-
pleted and dedicated in 18 12. San Juan was the
only mission whose population increased between
1820 and 1830. This was due to the fact that its
numbers were recruited from the eastern tribes,
its location being favorable for obtaining new
recruits from the gentiles. The largest popula-
tion it ever reached was 1,248 in 1823. In 1834
there were but 850 neophytes at the mission.

SAN MIGUEL.

Midway between the old missions of San An-
tonio and San Luis Obispo, on the 25th of July,
1797, was founded the mission of San Miguel
Arcangel. The two old missions contributed
horses, cattle and sheep to start the new one.
The mission had a propitious beginning; fifteen
children were baptized on the day the mission
was founded. At the close of the century the
number of converts reached three hundred and
eighty-five, of whom fifty-three had died. The
mission population numbered 1,076 in 1814;
after that it steadily declined until, in 1834, there
were only 599 attached to the establishment.
Total number of baptisms was 2,588; deaths
2,038. The average death rate was 6.91 per
cent of the population, the lowest rate in any

of the missions. The mission was secularized
in 1836.

SAN FERNANDO REY DE ESPANA.

In the closing years of the century explora-
tions were made for new mission sites in Cali-
fornia. These were to be located between mis-
sions already founded. Among those selected
at that time was the site of the mission San Fer-
nando on the Encino Rancho, then occupied by
Francisco Reyes. Reyes surrendered whatever
right he had to the land and the padres occupied
his house for a dwelling while new buildings
were in the course of erection.

September 8, 1797, with the usual ceremo-
nies, the mission was founded by President
Lasuen, assisted by Father Dumetz. According
to instructions from Mexico it was dedicated to
San Fernando Rey de Espana (Fernando III.,
King of Spain, 1217-1251). At the end of the
year 1797, fifty-five converts had been gathered
into the mission fold and at the end of the cen-
tury three hundred and fifty-two had been bap-
tized.

The adobe church began before the close of
the century was completed and dedicated in De-
cember, 1806. It had a tiled roof. It was but
slightly injured by the great earthquakes of De-
cember, 1812, which were so destructive to the
mission buildings at San Juan Capistrano, Santa
Barbara, La Purisima and Santa Ynez. Thi>
mission reached its greatest prosperity in 1819.
when its neophyte population numbered 1,080.
The largest number of cattle owned by it at one
time was 12,800 in 1819.

Its decline was not so rapid as that of some
of the other missions, but the death rate, espe-
cially among the children, was fully as high. Of
the 1,367 Indian children baptized there during
the existence of mission rule 965, or over seventy
per cent, died in childhood. It was not strange
that the fearful death rate both of children and
adults at the missions sometimes frightened
the neophytes into running away.

SAN LUIS REY DE FRAN CIA.

Several explorations had been made for a mis-
sion site between San Diego and San Juan
Capistrano. There was quite a large Indian

1,1

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

population that had not been brought into the
folds of either mission. In October, 1797, a
new exploration of this territory was ordered
and a site was finally selected, although the ag-
ricultural advantages were regarded as not sat-
isfactory.

Governor Borica, February 28, 1798- issued
orders to the comandante at San Diego to
furnish a detail of soldiers to aid in erecting the
necessary buildings. June 13, 1798, President
Lasuen, the successor of President Serra, as-
sisted by Fathers Peyri and Santiago, with the
usual services, founded the new mission. It
was named San Luis Rey de Francia (St. Louis.
King of France). Its location was near a river
on which was bestowed the name of the mis-
sion. The mission flourished from its very be-
ginning. Its controlling power was Padre An-
tonio Peyri. He remained in charge of it from
its founding almost to its downfall, in all thirty-
three years. He was a man of great executive
abilities and under his administration it be-
came one of the largest and most prosperous
missions in California. It reached its maximum
in 1826, when its neophyte population numbered
2,869, the largest number at one time connected
with any mission in the territory.

The asistencia or auxiliary mission of San
Antonio was established at Pala, seven leagues
easterly from the parent mission. A chapel was
erected here and regular services held. One of
the padres connected with San Luis Rey was
in charge of this station. Father Peyri left Cal-
ifornia in 183 1, with the exiled Governor Vic-
toria. He went to Mexico and from there to
Spain and lastly to Rome, where he died. The
mission was converted into an Indian pueblo in
1834, but the pueblo was not a success. Most
of the neophytes drifted to Los Angeles and
San Gabriel. During the Mexican conquest
American troops were stationed there. It has
recently been partially repaired and is now used
for a Franciscan school under charge of Father
J. J. O'Keefe.

SANTA YNEZ.

Santa Ynez was the last mission founded in
Southern California. It was established Sep-
tember 17, 1804. Tts location is about forty miles

northwesterly from Santa Barbara, on the east-
erly side of the Santa Ynez mountains and
eighteen miles southeasterly from La Purisima.
Father Tapis, president of the missions from
1803 to 1812, preached the sermon and was
assisted in the ceremonies by Fathers Cipies,
Calzada and Gutierrez. Carrillo, the comandante
at the presidio, was present, as were also a num-
ber of neophytes from Santa Barbara and La
Purisima. Some of these were transferred to
the new mission.

The earthquake of December, 1812, shook
down a portion of the church and destroyed a
number of the neophytes' houses. In 181 5 the
erection of a new church was begun. It was built
of adobes, lined with brick, and was completed
and dedicated July 4, 1817. The Indian revolt of
1824, described in the sketch of La Purisima,
broke out first at this mission. The neophytes
took possession of the church. The mission
guard defended themselves and the padre. At
the approach of the troops from Santa Barbara
the Indians fled to La Purisima.

San Ynez attained its greatest population,
770, in 1816. In 1834 its population had de-
creased to 334. From its founding in 1804 to
1834, when the decrees of secularization were
put in force, 757 Indian children were baptized
and 519 died, leaving only 238, or about thirty
per cent of those baptized to grow up.

SAN RAFAEL.

San Rafael was the first mission established
north of the Bay of San Francisco. It was
founded December 14, 1817. At first it was an
asistencia or branch of San Francisco. An epi-
demic had broken out in the Mission Dolores
and a number of the Indians were transferred to
San Rafael to escape the plague. Later on it
attained to the dignity of a mission. In 1828 its
population was 1,140. After 1830 it began to
decline and at the time of its secularization in
1834 there were not more than 500 connected
with it. In the seventeen years of its existence
under mission rule there were 1,873 baptisms and
698 deaths. The average death rate was 6.09
per cent of the population. The mission was
secularized in 1834. All traces of the mission
building have disappeared.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

SAN FRANCISCO SOLANO.

The mission of San Francisco de Asis had
fallen into a rapid decline. The epidemic that
had carried off a number of the neophytes and
had caused the transfer of a considerable num-
ber to San Rafael had greatly reduced its popu-
lation. Besides, the sterility of the soil in the
vicinity of the mission necessitated going a long-
distance for agricultural land and pasturage for
the herds and flocks. On this account and also
for the reason that a number of new converts
might be obtained from the gentiles living in
the district north of the bay, Governor Arguello
and the mission authorities decided to establish
a mission in that region. Explorations were
made in June and July, 1823. On the 4th of
July a site was selected, a cross blessed and
raised, a volley of musketry fired and mass said
at a place named New San Francisco, but after-
wards designated as the Mission of San Fran-
cisco Solano. On the 25th of August work was
begun on the mission building and on the 4th of
April, 1824, a church, 24x105 feet, built of wood,
was dedicated.

It had been intended to remove the neophytes
from the old mission of San Francisco to the
new; but the padres of the old mission opposed
its depopulation and suppression. A com-
promise was effected by allowing all neophytes
|o£ the old mission who so elected to go to the
new. Although well located, the Mission of
Solano was not prosperous. Its largest popula-
tion, 996, was reached in 1832. The total num-
jber of baptisms were 1,315; deaths, 651. The
average death rate was 7.8 per cent of the pop-
ulation. The mission was secularized in 1835, at
1 which time there were about 550 neophytes at-
ached to it.

The architecture of the missions was Moorish
—that is, if it belonged to any school. The
jadresin most cases were the architects and mas-
er builders. The main feature of the buildings
vas massiveness. Built of adobe or rough stone,
heir walls were of great thickness. Most of the
hurch buildings were narrow, their width being
ut of proportion to their length. This was
ecessitated by the difficulty of procuring joists
nd rafters of sufficient length for wide build-
lgs. The padres had no means or perhaps no

knowledge of trussing a roof, and the width
of the building had to be proportioned to the
length of the timbers procurable. Some of the
buildings were planned with an eye for the pic-
turesque, others for utility only. The sites se-
lected for the mission buildings in nearly every
case commanded a fine view of the surrounding
country. In their prime, their white walls loom-
ing up on the horizon could be seen at long
distance and acted as beacons to guide the trav-
eler to their hospitable shelter.

Col. J. J. Warner, who came to California in
1831, and saw the mission buildings before they
had fallen into decay, thus describes their gen-
eral plan: "As soon after the founding of a
mission as circumstances would permit, a large
pile of buildings in the form of a quadrangle,
composed in part of burnt brick, but chiefly of
sun-dried ones, was erected around a spacious
court. A large and capacious church, which
usually occupied one of the outer corners of the
quadrangle, was a conspicuous part of the pile.
In this massive building, covered with red tile,
was the habitation of the friars, rooms for guests
and for the major domos and their families. In
other buildings of the quadrangle were hospital
wards, storehouses and granaries, rooms for
carding, spinning and weaving of woolen fab-
rics, shops for blacksmiths, joiners and carpen-
ters, saddlers, shoemakers and soap boilers, and
cellars for storing the product (wine and brandy)
of the vineyards. Near the habitation of the
friars another building of similar material was
placed and used as quarters for a small number
— about a corporal's guard — of soldiers under
command of a non-commissioned officer, to hold
the Indian neophytes in check as well as to pro-
tect the mission from the attacks of hostile In-
dians." The Indians, when the buildings of the
establishment were complete, lived in adobe
houses built in lines near the quadrangle. Some
of the buildings of the square were occupied by
the alcaldes or Indian bosses. When the In-
dians were gathered into the missions at first
they lived in brush shanties constructed in the
same manner as their forefathers had built them
for generations. In some of the missions these
huts were not replaced by adobe buildings for
a generation or more. Vancouver, who visited

(56

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the Mission of San Francisco in 1792, sixteen
years after its founding, describes the Indian
village with its brush-built huts. He says:
"These miserable habitations, each of which was
allotted for the residence of a whole family,
were erected with some degree of uniformity
about three or four feet asunder in straight rows,
leaving lanes or passageways at right angles be-
tween them; but these were so abominably in-
fested with every kind of filth and nastiness as
to be rendered no less offensive than degrading
to the human species."

Of the houses at Santa Clara, Vancouver
says: "The habitations were not so regularly
disposed nor did it (the village) contain so many
as the village of San Francisco, yet the same
horrid state of uncleanliness and laziness seemed
to pervade the whole." Better houses were then
in the course of construction at Santa Clara.
"Each house would contain two rooms and a
garret with a garden in the rear." Vancouver

visited San Carlos de Monterey in 1792, twenty-
two years after its founding. He says: "Not-
withstanding these people are taught and em-
ployed from time to time in many of the occu-
pations most useful to civil society, they had not
made themselves any more comfortable habita-
tions than those of their forefathers; nor did
they seem in any respect to have benefited by
the instruction they had received."

Captain Beechey, of the English navy, who
visited San Francisco and the missions around
the bay in 1828, found the Indians at San Fran-
cisco still living in their filthy hovels and grind-
ing acorns for food. "San Jose (mission)," he
says, "on the other hand, was all neatness, clean-
liness and comfort." At San Carlos he found
that the filthy hovels described by Vancouver
had nearly all disappeared and the Indians were
comfortably housed. He adds: "Sickness in
general prevailed to an incredible extent in all
the missions."

CHAPTER VI.

PRESIDIOS OF CALIFORNIA.

San Diego.

THE presidio was an essential feature of
the Spanish colonization of America. It
was usually a fortified square of brick or
stone, inside of which were the barracks of the
soldiers, the officers' quarters, a church, store
houses for provisions and military supplies. The
gates at the entrance were closed at night, and
it was usually provisioned for a siege. In the
colonization of California there were four pre-
sidios established, namely: San Diego, Monte-
rey, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. Each
was the headquarters of a military district and
besides a body of troops kept at the presidio
it furnished guards for the missions in its re-
spective district and also for the pueblos if there
were any in the district. The first presidio was
founded at San Diego. As stated in a previous
chapter, the two ships of the expedition by sea
for the settlement of California arrived at the
port of San Diego in a deplorable condition

from scurvy. The San Antonia, after a voyage
of fifty-nine days, arrived on April 1 1 ; the San
Carlos, although she had sailed a month earlier,
did not arrive until April 29, consuming one
hundred and ten days in the voyage. Don
Miguel Constanso, the engineer who came on
this vessel, says in his report: "The scurvy had
infected all without exception; in such sort that
on entering San Diego already two men had
died of the said sickness; most of the seamen,
and half of the troops, found themselves pros-
trate in their beds ; only four mariners remained
on their feet, and attended, aided by the troops,
to trimming and furling the sails and other
working of the ship." "The San Antonia," says
Constanso, "had the half of its crew equally
affected by the scurvy, of which illness two men
had likewise died." This vessel, although it had
arrived at the port on the nth of April, had evi-
dently not landed any of its sick. On the 1st of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

May, Don Pedro Fages, the commander of the
troops, Constanso and Estorace, the second cap-
tain of the San Carlos, with twenty-five soldiers,
set out to find a watering place where they could
fill their barrels with fresh water. "Following
the west shore of the port, after going a mat-
ter of three leagues, they arrived at the banks
of a river hemmed in with a fringe of willows
and cottonwoods. Its channel must have been
twenty varas wide and it discharges into an
estuary which at high tide could admit the
launch and made it convenient for accomplish-
ing the taking on of water." * * * "Hav-
ing reconnoitered the watering place, the Span-
iards betook themselves back on board the
vessels and as these were found to be very far
away from the estuary in which the river dis-
charges, their captains, Vicente Vila and Don
Juan Perez, resolved to approach it as closely
as they could in order to give less work to the
people handling the launches. These labors
were accomplished with satiety of hardship; for
from one day to the next the number of the sick
kept increasing, along with the dying of the
most aggravated cases and augmented the fa-
tigue of the few who remained on their
feet."

"Immediate to the beach on the side toward
the east a scanty enclosure was constructed
formed of a parapet of earth and fascines, which
was garnished with two cannons. They disem-
barked some sails and awnings from the packets
with which they made two tents capacious
enough for a hospital. At one side the two offi-
cers, the missionary fathers and the surgeon put
up their own tents; the sick were brought in
launches to this improvised presidio and hospi-
tal." "But these diligencies," says Constanso,
"were not enough to procure them health."
* * * "The cold made itself felt with rigor at
night in the barracks and the sun by day, alter-
nations which made the sick suffer cruelly, two
or three of them dying every day. And this
whole expedition, which had been composed of
more than ninety men, saw itself reduced to only
eight soldiers and as many mariners in a state to
attend to the safeguarding of the barks, the
working of the launches, custody of the camp
and service of the sick."

Rivera y Moncada, the commander of the
first detachment of the land expedition, arrived
at San Diego May 14. It was decided by the
officers to remove the camp to a point near the
river. This had not been done before on ac-
count of the small force able to work and the
lack of beasts of burden. Rivera's men were all
in good health and after a day's rest "all were
removed to a new camp, which was transferred
one league further north on the right side of
the river upon a hill of middling height."

Here a presidio was built, the remains of
which can still be seen. It was a parapet of
earth similar to that thrown up at the first camp,
which, according to Bancroft, was probably
within the limits of New Town and the last one
in Old Town or North San Diego.

While Portola's expedition was away search-
ing for the port of Monterey, the Indians made
an attack on the camp at San Diego, killed a
Spanish youth and wounded Padre Viscaino, the
blacksmith, and a Lower California neophyte.
The soldiers remaining at San Diego sur-
rounded the buildings with a stockade. Con-
stanso says, on the return of the Spaniards of
Portola's expedition: "They found in good con-
dition their humble buildings, surrounded with
a palisade of trunks of trees, capable of a good
defense in case of necessity."

"In 1782, the presidial force at San Diego, be-
sides the commissioned officers, consisted of five
corporals and forty-six soldiers. Six men were
constantly on duty at each of the three missions
of the district, San Diego, San Juan Capistrano
and San Gabriel; while four served at the pueblo
of Los Angeles, thus leaving a sergeant, two
corporals and about twenty-five men to garrison
the fort, care for the horses and a small herd of
cattle, and to carry the mails, which latter duty
was the hardest connected with the presidio
service in time of peace. There were a carpenter
and blacksmith constantly employed, besides a
few servants, mostly natives. The population of
the district in 1790, not including Indians, was
220."*

Before the close of the century the wooden
palisades had been replaced by a thick adobe

*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. I.

IIS

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

wall, but even then the fort was not a very for-
midable defense. Vancouver, the English navi-
gator, who visited it in 1793, describes it as
"irregularly built on very uneven ground, which
makes it liable to some inconveniences without
the obvious appearance of any object for select-
ing such a spot." It then mounted three small
brass cannon.

Gradually a town grew up around the pre-
sidio. Robinson, who visited San Diego in
1829, thus describes it: "On the lawn beneath
the hill on which the presidio is built stood
about thirty houses of rude appearance, mostly
occupied by retired veterans, not so well con-
structed in respect either to beauty or stability
as the houses at Monterey, with the exception of
that belonging to our Administrador, Don Juan
Bandini, whose mansion, then in an unfinished
state, bid fair, when completed, to surpass any
other in the country."

Under Spain there was attempt at least to
keep the presidio in repair, but under Mexican
domination it fell into decay. Dana describes it
as he saw it in 1836: "The first place we went
to was the old ruinous presidio, which stands on
rising ground near the village which it over-
looks. It is built in the form of an open square,
like all the other presidios, and was in a most
ruinous state, with the exception of one side,
in which the comandante lived with his family.
There were only two guns, one of which was
spiked and the other had no carriage. Twelve
half clothed and half starved looking fellows
composed the garrison; and they, it was said,
had not a musket apiece. The small settlement
lay directly below the fort composed of about
forty dark brown looking huts or houses and
three or four larger ones whitewashed, which
belonged to the gente de razon."

THE PRESIDIO OF MONTEREY.

In a previous chapter has been narrated the
story of Portola's expedition in search of Mon-
terey Bay, how the explorers, failing to recog-
nize it, passed on to the northward and discov-
ered the great Bay of San Francisco. On their
return they set up a cross at what they supposed
was the Bay of Monterey; and at the foot of
the cross buried a letter giving information to

any ship that might come up the coast in search
of them that they had returned to San Diego.
They had continually been on the lookout for
the San Jose, which was to co-operate with
them, but that vessel had been lost at sea with
all on board. On their return to San Diego, in
January, 1770, preparations were made for a
return as soon as a vessel should arrive. It
was not until the 16th of April that the San An-
tonia, the only vessel available, was ready to
depart for the second objective point of settle-
ment. On the 17th of April, Governor Portola,
Lieutenant Fages, Father Crespi and nineteen
soldiers took up their line of march for Monte-
rey. They followed the trail made in 1769 and
reached the point where they had set up the
cross April 24. They found it decorated with
feathers, bows and arrows and a string of fish.
Evidently the Indians regarded it as the white
man's fetich and tried to propitiate it by offer-
ings.

The San Antonia, bearing Father Serra,
Pedro Prat, the surgeon, and Miguel Constanso,
the civil engineer, and supplies for the mission
and presidio, arrived the last day of May. Por-
tola was still uncertain whether this was really
Monterey Bay. It was hard to discover in the
open roadstead stretching out before them Vis-
caino's land-locked harbor, sheltered from all
winds. After the arrival of the San Antonia the
officers of the land and sea expedition made a
reconnaissance of the bay and all concurred that
at last they had reached the destined port. They
located the oak under whose wide-spreading
branches Padre Ascension, Viscaino's chaplain,
had celebrated mass in 1602, and the springs of
fresh water near by. Preparations were begun
at once for the founding of mission and presidio.
A shelter of boughs was constructed, an altar
raised and the bells hung upon the branch of a
tree. Father Serra sang mass and as they had
no musical instrument, salvos of artillery and
volleys of musketry furnished an accompani-
ment to the service. After the religious services
the royal standard was raised and Governor
Portola took possession of the country in the
name of King Carlos III., King of Spain. The
ceremony closed with the pulling of grass and
the casting of stones around, significant of en-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tire possession of the earth and its products.
After the service all feasted.

Two messengers were sent by Portola with
dispatches to the city of Mexico. A day's jour-
ney below San Diego they met Rivera and
twenty soldiers coming with a herd of cattle and
a flock of sheep to stock the mission pastures.
Rivera sent back five of his soldiers with Por-
tola's carriers. The messengers reached Todos
Santos near Cape San Lucas in forty-nine days
from Monterey. From there the couriers were
sent to San Bias by ship, arriving at the city of
Mexico August 10. There was great rejoicing
at the capital. Marquis Le Croix and Visitador
Galvez received congratulations in the King's
name for the extension of his domain.

Portola superintended the building of some
rude huts for the shelter of the soldiers, the
officers and the padres. Around the square
containing the huts a palisade of poles was con-
structed. July 9, Portola having turned over
the command of the troops to Lieutenant Fages,
embarked on the San Antonia for San Bias;
with him went the civil engineer, Constanso,
from whose report I have frequently quoted.
Neither of them ever returned to California.

The difficulty of reaching California by ship
on account of the head winds that blow down
the coast caused long delays in the arrival ot
vessels with supplies. This brought about a
scarcity of provisions at the presidios and mis-
sions.

In 1772 the padres of San Gabriel were re-
duced to a milk diet and what little they could
obtain from the Indians. At Monterey and San
Antonio the padres and the soldiers were obliged
to live on vegetables. In this emergency Lieu-
tenant Fages and a squad of soldiers went on a
bear hunt. They spent three months in the
summer of 1772 killing bears in the Canada de
los Osos (Bear Canon). The soldiers and mis-
sionaries had a plentiful supply of bear meat.
There were not enough cattle in the country to
admit of slaughtering any for food. The pre-
sidial walls which were substituted for the pal-
isades were built of adobes and stone. The
inclosure measured one hundred and ten yards
on each side. The buildings were roofed with
tiles. "On the north were the main entrance,

the guard house, and the warehouses; on da-
west the houses of the governor comandante
and other officers, some fifteen apartments in
all; on the east nine houses for soldiers, and a
blacksmith shop; and on the south, besides
nine similar houses, was the presidio church,
opposite the main gateway."*

The military force at the presidio consisted of
cavalry, infantry and artillery, their number*
varying from one hundred to one hundred and
twenty in all. These soldiers furnished guard-,
for the missions of San Carlos, San Antonio,
San Miguel, Soledad and San Luis Obispo. The
total population of gente de razon in the district
at the close of the century numbered four lum-
dren and ninety. The rancho "del fey" or
rancho of the king was located where Salinas
City now stands. This rancho was managed by
the soldiers of presidio and was intended to
furnish the military with meat and a supply of
horses for the cavalry. At the presidio a num-
ber of invalided soldiers who had served out
their time were settled; these were allowed to
cultivate land and raise cattle on the unoccu-
pied lands of the public domain. A town grad-
ually grew up around the presidio square.

Vancouver, the English navigator, visited the
presidio of Monterey in 1792 and describes it as
it then appeared: "The buildings of the pre-
sidio form a parallelogram or long square com-
prehending an area of about three hundred
yards long by two hundred and fifty wide, mak-
ing one entire enclosure. The external wall is
of the same magnitude and built with the same
materials, and except that the officers' apart-
ments are covered with red tile made in the
neighborhood, the whole presents the same
lonely, uninteresting appearance as that already
described at San Francisco. Like that estab-
lishment, the several buildings for the use of the
officers, soldiers, and for the protection of stores
and provisions are erected along the walls on
the inside of the inclosure, which admits of but
one entrance for carriages or persons on hor^i
back; this, as at San Francisco, is on the side
of the square fronting the church which was
rebuilding with stone like that at San Carlos."
* * *

♦Bancroft's History of California. Vol. I.

Tit

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

"At each corner of the square is a small kind
of block house raised a little above the top of
the wall where swivels might be mounted for its
protection. On the outside, before the entrance
into the presidio, which fronts the shores of
the bay, are placed seven cannon, four nine and
three three-pounders, mounted. The guns are
planted on the open plain ground without
breastwork or other screen for those employed
in working them or the least protection from the
weather."

THE PRESIDIO OF SAN FRANCISCO.

In a previous chapter I have given an account
of the discovery of San Francisco Bay by Por-
tola's expedition in 1769. The discovery of that
great bay seems to have been regarded as an
unimportant event by the governmental offi-
cials. While there was great rejoicing at the
city of Mexico over the founding of a mission
for the conversion of a few naked savages, the
discovery of the bay was scarcely noticed, ex-
cept to construe it into some kind of a miracle.
Father Serra assumed that St. Francis had con-
cealed Monterey from the explorers and led
them to the discovery of the bay in order that
he (St. Francis) might have a mission named
for him. Indeed, the only use to which the
discovery could be put, according to Serra's
ideas, was a site for a mission on its shores, dedi-
cated to the founder of the Franciscans. Several
explorations were made with this in view. In
1772, Lieutenant Fages, Father Crespi and six-
teen soldiers passed up the western side of the
bay and in 1774 Captain Rivera, Father Palou
and a squad of soldiers passed up the eastern
shore, returning by way of Monte Diablo,
Amador valley and Alameda creek to the Santa
Clara valley.

In the latter part of the year 1774, viceroy
Bucureli ordered the founding of a mission and
presidio at San Francisco. Hitherto all explora-
tions of the bay had been made by land expedi-
tions. No one had ventured on its waters. In
1775 Lieutenant Juan de Ayala of the royal
navy was sent in the old pioneer mission ship,
the San Carlos, to make a survey of it. August
5, 1775, he passed through the Golden Gate.
He moored his ship at an island called by him

Nuestra Sehora de los Angeles, now Angel
Island. He spent forty days in making explora-
tions. His ship was the first vessel to sail upon
the great Bay of San Francisco.

In 1774, Captain Juan Bautista de Anza, com-
mander of the presidio of Tubac in Sonora, had
made an exploration of a route from Sonora via
the Colorado river, across the desert and
through the San Gorgonia pass to San Gabriel
mission. From Tubac to the Colorado river the
route had been traveled before but from the
Colorado westward the country was a terra in-
cognita. He was guided over this by a lower
California neophyte who had deserted from San
Gabriel mission and alone had reached the
rancherias on the Colorado.

After Anza's return to Sonora he was com-
missioned by the viceroy to recruit soldiers and
settlers for San Francisco. October 23, 1775,
Anza set out from Tubac with an expedition
numbering two hundred and thirty-five persons,
composed of soldiers and their families, colon-
ists, musketeers and vaqueros. They brought
with them large herds of horses, mules and cat-
tle. The journey was accomplished without loss
of life, but with a considerable amount of suf-
fering. January 4, 1776, the immigrants ar-
rived at San Gabriel mission, where they stopped
to rest, but were soon compelled to move on,
provisions at the mission becoming scarce. They
arrived at Monterey, March 10. Here they went
into camp. Anza with an escort of soldiers pro-
ceeded to San Francisco to select a presidio
site. Having found a site he returned to Mon-
terey. Rivera, the commander of the territory,
had manifested a spirit of jealousy toward Anza
and had endeavored to thwart him in his at-
tempts to found a settlement. Disgusted with
the action of the commander, Anza, leaving his
colonists to the number of two hundred at Mon-
terey took his departure from California. Anza
in his explorations for a presidio site had fixed
upon what is now Fort Point.

After his departure Rivera experienced a
change of heart and instead of trying to delay
the founding he did everything to hasten it. The
imperative orders of the viceroy received at
about this time brought about the change. He
ordered Lieutenant Moraga, to whom Anza had

HISTORICAL AND- BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

turned over the command of his soldiers and
colonists, to proceed at once to San Francisco
with twenty soldiers to found the fort. The San
Carlos, which had just arrived at Monterey, was
ordered to proceed to San Francisco to assist
in the founding. Moraga with his soldiers ar-
rived June 27, and encamped on the Laguna
de los Dolores, where the mission was a short
time afterwards founded. Moraga decided to
located the presidio at the site selected by Anza
but awaited the arrival of the San Carlos before
proceeding to build. August 18 the vessel ar-
rived. It had been driven down the coast to the
latitude of San Diego by contrary winds and
then up the coast to latitude 42 degrees. On the
arrival of the vessel work was begun at once on
the fort. A square of ninety-two varas (two
hundred and forty-seven feet) on each side was
inclosed with palisades. Barracks, officers'
quarters and a chapel were built inside the
square. September 17, 1776, was set apart for
the services of founding, that being the day of
the "Sores of our seraphic father St. Francis."
The royal standard was raised in front of the
square and the usual ceremony of pulling grass
and throwing stones was performed. Posses-
sion of the region round about was taken in the
name of Carlos III., King of Spain. Over one
hundred and fifty persons witnessed the cere-
mony. Vancouver, who visited the presidio in
November, 1792, describes it as a "square area
whose sides were about two hundred yards in
length, enclosed by a mud wall and resembling
a pound for cattle. Above this wall the thatched
roofs of the low small houses just made their
appearance." The wall was "about fourteen feet
high and five feet in breadth and was first
formed by upright and horizontal rafters of
large timber, between which dried sods and
moistened earth were pressed as close and hard
as possible, after which the whole was cased with
the earth made into a sort of mud plaster which
gave it the appearance of durability."

In addition to the presidio there was another
fort at Fort Point named Castillo de San Joa-
quin. It was completed and blessed December
8, 1794- "It was of horseshoe shape, about one
hundred by one hundred and twenty feet." The
structure rested mainly on sand; the brick-faced

adobe walls crumbled at the shock whenever a
salute was fired; the guns were badly mounted
and for the most part worn out, only two of the
thirteen twenty-four-pounders being serviceable
or capable of sending a ball across the entrance
of the fort.*

PRESIDIO OF SANTA BARBARA.

Cabrillo, in 1542, found a large Indian popula-
tion inhabiting the main land of the Santa Bar-
bara channel. Two hundred and twenty-seven
years later, when Portola made his exploration,
apparently there had been no decrease in the
number of inhabitants. No portion of the coast
offered a better field for missionary labor and
Father Serra was anxious to enter it. In ac-
cordance with Governor Felipe de Neve's report
of 1777, it had been decided to found three mis-
sions and a presidio on the channel. Various
causes had delayed the founding and it was not
until April 17, 1782, that Governor de Neve
arrived at the point where he had decided to
locate the presidio of Santa Barbara. The
troops that were to man the fort reached San
Gabriel in the fall of 178 1. It was thought best
for them to remain there until the rainy sea-
son was over. March 26, 1782, the governor and
Father Serra, accompanied by the largest body
of troops that had ever before been collected in
California, set out to found the mission of San
Buenaventura and the presidio. The governor,
as has been stated in a former chapter, was re-
called to San Gabriel. The mission was founded
and the governor having rejoined the cavalcade
a few weeks later proceeded to find a location
for the presidio.

"On reaching a point nine leagues from San
Buenaventura, the governor called a halt and in
company with Father Serra at once proceeded to
select a site for the presidio. The choice re-
sulted in the adoption of the square now
formed by city blocks 139, 140, 155 and 156,
and bounded in common by the following
streets: Figueroa, Canon Perdido, Garden and
Anacapa. A large community of Indians were
residing there but orders were given to leave
them undisturbed. The soldiers were at once

♦Bancroft's ''History of California." Vol. I.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

directed to hew timbers and gather brush to
erect temporary barracks which, when com-
pleted, were also used as a chapel. A large
wooden cross was made that it might be planted
in the center of the square and possession of
the country was taken in the name of the cross,
the emblem of Christianity.

April 21, 1782, the soldiers formed a square
and with edifying solemnity raised the cross and
secured it in the earth. Father Serra blessed
and consecrated the district and preached a ser-
mon. The royal standard of Spain was un-
furled."*

An inclosure, sixty varas square, was made of
palisades. The Indians were friendly, and
through their chief Yanoalit, who controlled thir-
teen rancherias, details of them were secured
to assist the soldiers in the work of building.
The natives were paid in food and clothing for
their labor.

Irrigation works were constructed, consisting
of a large reservoir made of stone and cement,
with a zanja for conducting water to the pre-
sidio. The soldiers, who had families, cultivated
umall gardens which aided in their support.
Lieutenant Ortega was in command of the pre-
sidio for two years after its founding. He was
succeeded by Lieutenant Felipe de Goycoechea.
After the founding of the mission in 1786, a
bitter feud broke out between the padres and
the comandante of the presidio. Goycoechea
claimed the right to employ the Indians in the
building of the presidio as he had done before
the coming of the friars. This they denied.
After an acrimonious controversy the dispute
was finally compromised by dividing the Indians
into two bands, a mission band and a prosidio
band.

Gradually the palisades were replaced by an
adobe wall twelve feet high. It had a stone
foundation and was strongly built. The plaza or
inclosed square was three hundred and thirty
feet on each side. On two sides of this inclos-
ure were ranged the family houses of the sol-
diers, averaging in size 15x25 feet. On one side
stood the officers' quarters and the church. On

♦Father Cabelleria's History of Santa Barbara.

the remaining side were the main entrance four
varas wide, the store rooms, soldiers' quarters
and a guard room; and adjoining these outside
the walls were the corrals for cattle and horses.
A force of from fifty to sixty soldiers was kept
at the post. There were bastions at two of the
corners for cannon.

The presidio was completed about 1790, with
the exception of the chapel, which was not fin-
ished until 1797. Many of the soldiers when
they had served out their time desired to re-
main in the country. These were given permis-
sion to build houses outside the walls of the
presidio and in course of time a village grew tip
around it.

At the close of the century the population of
the gente de razon of the district numbered
three hundred and seventy. The presidio when
completed was the best in California. Van-
couver, the English navigator, who visited it in
November, 1793, says of it: "The buildings ap-
peared to be regular and well constructed; the
walls clean and white and the roofs of the houses
were covered with a bright red tile. The pre-
sidio excels all the others in neatness, cleanli-
ness and other smaller though essential com-
forts; it is placed on an elevated part of the
plain and is raised some feet from the ground
by a basement story which adds much to its
pleasantness."

During the Spanish regime the settlement at
the presidio grew in the leisurely way that all
Spanish towns grew in California. There was
but little immigration from Mexico and about
the only source of increase was from invalid
soldiers and the children of the soldiers grow-
ing up to manhood and womanhood. It was a
dreary and monotonous existence that the sol-
diers led at the presidios. A few of them had
their families with them. These when the coun-
try became more settled had their own houses
adjoining the presidio and formed the nuclei
of the towns that grew up around the different
forts. There was but little fighting to do and
the soldiers' service consisted mainly of a round
of guard duty at the forts and missions. Oc-
casionally there were conquistas into the In-
dian country to secure new material for con-
verts from the gentiles. The soldiers were oc-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

casionally employed in hunting hindas or run-
aways from the missions. These when brought
back were thoroughly flogged and compelled to
wear clogs attached to their legs. Once a month
the soldier couriers brought up from Loreta a
budget of mail made up of official bandos and a

7:i

few letters. These contained about all the news
that reached them from their old homes in
Mexico. But few of the soldiers returned to
Mexico when their term of enlistment expired.
In course of time these and their descendants
formed the bulk of California's population.

CHAPTER VII.

PUEBLOS.

THE pueblo plan of colonization so com-
mon in Hispano-American countries did
not originate with the Spanish-Amer-
ican colonists. It was older even than Spain
herself. In early European colonization, the
pueblo plan, the common square in the center
of the town, the house lots grouped round it,
the arable fields and the common pasture lands
beyond, appears in the Aryan village, in the an-
cient German mark and in the old Roman
praesidium. The Puritans adopted this form in
their first settlements in New England. Around
the public square or common where stood the
meeting house and the town house, they laid off
their home lots and beyond these were their
cultivated fields and their common pasture lands.
This form of colonization was a combination of
communal interests and individual ownership.
Primarily, no doubt, it was adopted for protec-
tion against the hostile aborigines of the coun-
try, and secondly for social advantage. It re-
versed the order of our own western coloniza-
tion. The town came first, it was the initial
point from which the settlement radiated; while
with our western pioneers the town was an after-
thought, a center point for the convenience of
trade.

When it had been decided to send colonists
to colonize California the settlements naturally
took the pueblo form. The difficulty of obtain-
ing regular supplies for the presidios from Mex-
ico, added to the great expense of shipping such
a long distance, was the principal cause that in-
fluenced the government to establish pueblos de
gente de razon. The presidios received their
shipments of grain for breadstuff from San Bias

by sailing vessels. The arrival of these was un-
certain. Once when the vessels were unusually
long in coming, the padres and the soldier-* at
the presidios and missions were reduced to liv-
ing on milk, bear meat and what provisions the)
could obtain from the Indians. When Felipe de
Neve was made governor of Alta or N'ueva
California in 1776 he was instructed by the vice-
roy to make observations on the agricultural
possibilities of the country and the feasibility of
founding pueblos where grain could be produced
to supply the military establishments.

On his journey from San Diego to San Fran-
cisco in 1777 he carefully examined the coun-
try; and as a result of his observations recom-
mended the founding of two pueblos; one on the
Rio de Porciuncula in the south, and the other
on the Rio de Guadalupe in the north. On the
29th of November, 1777, the Pueblo of San
Jose de Guadelupe was founded. The colonists
were nine of the presidio soldiers from S in
Francisco and Monterey, who had some knowl-
edge of farming and five of Anza's pobladores
who had come with his expedition the previous
years to found the presidio of San Francisco,
making with their families sixty-one persons in
ail. The pueblo was named for the patron saint
of California, San Jose (St. Joseph), husband of
Santa Maria, Queen of the Angeles.

The site selected for the town was about a
mile and a quarter north of the center of the
present city. The first houses were built of pal-
isades and the interstices plastered with mud.
These huts were roofed with earth and the floor
was the hard beaten ground. Each head of a
family was given a suerte or sowing lot of two

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

hundred varas square, a house lot, "ten dollars
a month and a soldier's rations." Each, also,
received a yoke of oxen, two cows, a mule, two
sheep and two goats, together with the neces-
sary implements and seed, all of which were to
be repaid in products of the soil delivered at the
royal warehouse. The first communal work
done by the pobladores (colonists) was to dam
the river, and construct a ditch to irrigate their
sowing fields. The dam was not a success and
the first sowing of grain was lost. The site se-
lected for the houses was low and subject to
overflow.

During wet winters the inhabitants were com-
pelled to take a circuitous route of three leagues
to attend church service at the mission of Santa
Clara. After enduring this state of affairs
through seven winters they petitioned the
governor for permission to remove the pu-
eblo further south on higher ground. The gov-
ernor did not have power to grant the request.
The petition was referred to the comandante-
general of the Intendencia in Mexico in 1785.
He seems to have studied over the matter two
years and having advised with the asesor-general
"finally issued a decree, June 21, 1787, to Gov-
ernor Fages, authorizing the settlers to remove
to the "adjacent loma (hill) selected by them as
more useful and advantageous without chang-
ing or altering, for this reason, the limits and
boundaries of the territory or district assigned
to said settlement and to the neighboring Mis-
sion of Santa Clara, as there is no just cause
why the latter should attempt to appropriate to
herself that land."

Having frequently suffered from floods, it
would naturally be supposed that the inhabi-
tants, permission being granted, moved right
away. They did nothing of the kind. Ten years
passed and they were still located on the old
marshy site, still discussing the advantages of
the new site on the other side of the river.
Whether the padres of the Mission of Santa
Clara opposed the moving does not appear in
the records, but from the last clause of the com-
andante-general's decree in which he says "there
is not just cause why the latter (the Mission of
Santa Clara) should attempt to appropriate to
herself the land," it would seem that the mission

padres were endeavoring to secure the new site
or at least prevent its occupancy. There was a
dispute between the padres and the pobladores
over the boundary line between the pueblo and
mission that outlived the century. After hav-
ing been referred to the titled officials, civil and
ecclesiastical, a boundary line was finally estab-
lished, July 24, 1801, that was satisfactory to
both. "According to the best evidence I have
discovered," says Hall in his History of San
Jose, "the removal of the pueblo took place in
1797," just twenty years after the founding. In
1798 the juzgado or town hall was built. It
was located on Market street near El Dorado
street.

The area of a pueblo was four square leagues
(Spanish) or about twenty-seven square miles.
This was sometimes granted in a square and
sometimes in a rectangular form. The pueblo
lands were divided into classes: Solares, house
lots; suertes (chance), sowing fields, so named
because they were distributed by lot; propios,
municipal lands or lands the rent of which went
to defray municipal expenses; ejidas, vacant
suburbs or commons; dehesas, pasture where
the large herds of the pueblo grazed; realenges,
royal lands also used for raising revenue; these
were unappropriated lands.

From various causes the founding of the sec-
ond pueblo had been delayed. In the latter part
of 1779, active preparations were begun for car-
rying out the plan of founding a presidio and
three missions on the Santa Barbara Channel
and a pueblo on the Rio Porciuncula to be
named "Reyna de Los Angeles." The comand-
ante-general of the Four Interior Provinces of
the West (which embraced the Californias, So-
nora, New Mexico and Viscaya), Don Teodoro
de Croix or "El Cavallero de Croix," "The
Knight of the Cross," as he usually styled him-
self, gave instructions to Don Fernando de Ri-
vera y Moncada to recruit soldiers and settlers
for the proposed presidio and pueblo in Nueva
California. He, Rivera, crossed the gulf and be-
gan recruiting in Sonora and Sinaloa. His in-
structions were to secure twenty-four settlers,
who were heads of families. They must be ro-
bust and well behaved, so that they might set
a good example to the natives. Their families

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

I.",

must accompany them and unmarried female
relatives must be encouraged to go, with the
view to marrying them to bachelor sol-
diers.

According to the regulations drafted by Gov-
ernor Felipe de Neve, June i, 1779, for the gov-
ernment of the province of California and ap-
proved by the king, in a royal order of the 24th
of October, 1781, settlers in California from the
older provinces were each to be granted a house
lot and a tract of land for cultivation. Each
poblador in addition was to receive $116.50 a
year for the first two years, "the rations to be
understood as comprehended in this amount,
and in lieu of rations for the next three years
they will receive $60 yearly."

Section 3 of Title 14 of the Reglamento pro-
vided that "To each poblador and to the com-
munity of the pueblo there shall be given under
condition of repayment in horses and mules fit
to be given and received, and in the payment of
the other large and small cattle at the just prices,
which are to be fixed by tariff, and of the tools
and implements at cost, as it is ordained, two
mares, two cows, and one calf, two sheep and
two goats, all breeding animals, and one yoke of
oxen or steers, one plow point, one hoe, one
spade, one axe, one sickle, one wood knife, one
musket and one leather shield, two horses and
one cargo mule. To the community there shall
likewise be given the males corresponding to
the total number of cattle of different kinds dis-
tributed amongst all the inhabitants, one forge
and anvil, six crowbars, six iron spades or shov-
els and the necessary tools for carpenter and
cast work." For the government's assistance to
the pobladores in starting their colony the set-
tlers were required to sell to the presidios the
surplus products of their lands and herds at fair
prices, which were to be fixed by the govern-
ment.

The terms offered to the settlers were cer-
tainly liberal, and by our own hardy pioneers,
who in the closing years of the last century were
making their way over the Alleghany mountains
into Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, they would
have been considered munificent; but to the in-
dolent and energyless mixed breeds of Sonora
and Sinaloa they were no inducement. After

spending nearly nine months in recruiting, Ri-
vera was able to obtain only fourteen pobladores,
but little over half the number required, and two
of these deserted before reaching California.
The soldiers that Rivera had recruited for Cal-
ifornia, forty-two in number, with their families,
were ordered to proceed overland from Alamos,
in Sonora, by way of Tucson and the Colorado
river to San Gabriel Mission. These were com-
manded by Rivera in person.

Leaving Alamos in April, 1 78 1 , they arrived
in the latter part of June at the junction of the
Gila and Colorado rivers. After a short delay
to rest, the main company was sent on to San
Gabriel Mission. Rivera, with ten or twelve
soldiers, remained to recruit his live stock before
crossing the desert. Two missions had been es-
tablished on the California side of the Colorado
the previous year. Before the arrival of Rivera
the Indians had been behaving badly. Rivera's
large herd of cattle and horses destroyed the
mesquite trees and intruded upon the Indians'
melon patches. This, with their previous quar-
rel with the padres, provoked the savages to an
uprising. They, on July 17, attacked the two
missions, massacred the padres and the Spanish
settlers attached to the missions and killed Ri-
vera and his soldiers, forty-six persons in all.
The Indians burned the mission buildings.
These were never rebuilt nor was there any at-
tempt made to convert the Yumas. The hos-
tility of the Yumas practically closed the Colo-
rado route to California for many years.

The pobladores who had been recruited for
the founding of the new pueblo, with their fami-
lies and a military escort, all under the command
of Lieut. Jose Zuniga, crossed the gulf from
Guaymas to Loreto, in Lower California, and by
the 1 6th of May were ready for their long jour-
ney northward. In the meantime two of the re-
cruits had deserted and one was left behind at
Loreto. On the 18th of August the eleven who
had remained faithful to their contract, with
their families, arrived at San Gabriel. On ac-
count of smallpox among some of the children
the company was placed in quarantine about a
league from the mission.

On the 26th of August. 1781. from San Ga-
briel, Governor de Neve issued his instructions

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

for the founding of Los Angeles, which gave
some additional rules in regard to the distribu-
tion of lots not found in the royal reglamento
previously mentioned.

On the 4th of September, 1781, the colonists,
with a military escort headed by Governor Fe-
lip de Neve, took up their line of march from
the Mission San Gabriel to the site selected for
their pueblo on the Rio de Porciuncula. There,
with religious ceremonies, the Pueblo de Nues-
tra Sehora La Reina de Los Angeles was for-
mally founded. A mass was said by a priest
from the Mission San Gabriel, assisted by the
choristers and musicians of that mission. There
were salvos of musketry and a procession with
a cross, candlestick, etc. At the head of the
procession the soldiers bore the standard of
Spain and the women followed bearing a ban-
ner with the image of our Lady the Queen of
the Angels. This procession made a circuit of
the plaza, the priest blessing it and the building
lots. At the close of the services Governor de
Neve made an address full of good advice to the
colonists. Then the governor, his military es-
cort and the priests returned to San Gabriel and
the colonists were left to work out their
destiny.

Few of the great cities of the land have had
such humble founders as Los Angeles. Of the
eleven pobladores who built their huts of poles
and tule thatch around the plaza vieja one hun-
dred and twenty-five years ago, not one could
read or write. Not one could boast of an un-
mixed ancestry. They were mongrels in race,
Caucasian, Indian and Negro mixed. Poor in
purse, poor in blood, poor in all the sterner qual-
ities of character that our own hardy pioneers
of the west possessed, they left no impress on
the city they founded; and the conquering race
that possesses the land that they colonized has
forgotten them. No street or landmark in the
city bears the name of any one of them. No
monument or tablet marks the spot where they
planted the germ of their settlement. No Fore-
fathers' day preserves the memory of their serv-
ices and sacrifices. Their names, race and the
number of persons in each family have been
preserved in the archives of California. They
are as follows:

1. Jose de Lara, a Spaniard (or reputed to be
one, although it is doubtful whether he was of
pure blood) had an Indian wife and three chil-
dren.

2. Jose Antonio Navarro, a Mestizo, forty-
two years old; wife a mulattress; three children.

3. Basilio Rosas, an Indian, sixty-eight years
old, had a mulatto wife and two children.

4. Antonio Mesa, a negro, thirty-eight years
old; had a mulatto wife and two children.

5. Antonio Felix Villavicencio, a Spaniard,
thirty years old; had an Indian wife and one
child.

6. Jose Vanegas, an Indian, twenty-eight
years old; had an Indian wife and one child.

7. Alejandro Rosas, an Indian, nineteen years
old, and had an Indian wife. (In the records,
"wife, Coyote-Indian.")

8. Pablo Rodriguez, an Indian, twenty-five
years old; had an Indian wife and one child.

9. Manuel Camero, a mulatto, thirty years
old; had a mulatto wife.

10. Luis Quintero, a negro, fifty-five years
old, and had a mulatto wife and five children.

1 1 . Jose Morena, a mulatto, twenty-two
years old, and had a mulatto wife.

Antonio Miranda, the twelfth person described
in the padron (list) as a Chino, fifty years old
and having one child, was left at Loreto when
the expedition marched northward. It would
have been impossible for him to have rejoined
the colonists before the founding. Presumably
his child remained with him, consequently there
were but forty-four instead of "forty-six persons
in all." Col. J. J. Warner, in his "Historical
Sketch of Los Angeles," originated the fiction
that one of the founders (Miranda, the Chino,)
was born in China. Chino, while it does mean a
Chinaman, is also applied in Spanish-American
countries to persons or animals having curly
hair. Miranda was probably of mixed Spanish
and Negro blood, and curly haired. There is
no record to show that Miranda ever came to
Alta California.

When Jose de Galvez was fitting out the ex-
pedition for occupying San Diego and Monte-
rey, he issued a proclamation naming St. Jo-
seph as the patron saint of his California colon-
ization scheme. Bearing this fact in mind, no

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

doubt, Governor de Neve, when he founded San
Jose, named St. Joseph its patron saint. Hav-
ing named one of the two pueblos for San Jose
it naturally followed that the other should be
named for Santa Maria, the Queen of the An-
gels, wife of San Jose.

On the ist of August, 1769, Portola's expedi-
tion, on its journey northward in search of Mon-
terey Bay, had halted in the San Gabriel valley
near where the Mission Vieja was afterwards lo-
cated, to reconnoiter the country and "above
all," as Father Crespi observes, "for the purpose
of celebrating the jubilee of Our Lady of the
Angels of Porciuncula." Next day, August 2,
after traveling about three leagues (nine miles),
Father Crespi, in his diary, says: "We came to
a rather wide Canada having a great many Cot-
tonwood and alder trees. Through it ran a
beautiful river toward the north-northeast and
curving around the point of a cliff it takes a di-
rection to the south. Toward the north-north-
east we saw another river bed which must have
been a great overflow, but we found it dry. This
arm unites with the river and its great floods
during the rainy season are clearly demon-
strated by the many uprooted trees scattered
along the banks." (This dry river is the Arroyo
Seco.) "We stopped not very far from the river,
to which we gave the name of Porciuncula."
Porciuncula is the name of a hamlet in Italy
near which was located the little church of Our
Lady of the Angels, in which St. Francis of As-
sisi was praying when the jubilee was granted
him. Father Crespi, speaking of the plain
through which the river flows, says: "This is
the best locality of all those we have yet seen
for a mission, besides having all the resources
required for a large town." Padre Crespi was
evidently somewhat of a prophet.

The fact that this locality had for a number
of years borne the name of "Our Lady of the
Angels of Porciuncula" may have influenced
Governor de Neve to locate his pueblo here.
The full name of the town, El Pueblo de Nuestra
Senora La Reyna de Los Angeles, was seldom
used. It was too long for everyday use. In the
earlier years of the town's history it seems to
have had a variety of names. It appears in the
records as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora de Los

Angeles, as El Pueblo de La Reyna de Los An-
geles and as El Pueblo de Santa Maria de Los
Angeles. Sometimes it was abbreviated to
Santa Maria, but it was most commonly spoken
of as El Pueblo, the town. At what time the
name of Rio Porciuncula was changed to Rio
Los Angeles is uncertain. The change no doubt
was gradual.

The site selected for the pueblo of Los An-
geles was picturesque and romantic. From
where Alameda street now is to the eastern
bank of the river the land was covered with a
dense growth of willows, cottonwoods and al-
ders; while here and there, rising above the
swampy copse, towered a giant aliso (sycamore).
Wild grapevines festooned the branches of the
trees and wild roses bloomed in profusion. Be-
hind the narrow shelf of mesa land where the
pueblo was located rose the brown hills, and in
the distance towered the lofty Sierra Madre
mountains.

The last pueblo founded in California under
Spanish domination was Villa de Branciforte,
located on the opposite side of the river from
the Mission of Santa Cruz. It was named after
the Viceroy Branciforte. It was designed as a
coast defense and a place to colonize discharged
soldiers. The scheme was discussed for a con-
siderable time before anything was done. Gov-
ernor Borica recommended "that an adobe
house be built for each settler so that the prev-
alent state of things in San Jose and Los An-
geles,where the settlers still live in tule huts, be-
ing unable to build better dwellings without
neglecting their fields, may be prevented, the
houses to cost not over two hundred dollars."*

The first detachment of the colonists arrived
May 12, 1797, on the Concepcion in a destitute
condition. Lieutenant Moraga was sent to su-
perintend the construction of houses for the
colonists. He was instructed to build temporary
huts for himself and the guard, then to build
some larger buildings to accommodate fifteen or
twenty families each. These were to be tem-
porary. Only nine families came and they were
of a vagabond class that had a constitutional
antipathy to work. The settlers received the

♦Bancroft's History of California. Vol. I.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

same amount of supplies and allowance of
money as the colonists of San Jose and Los
Angeles. Although the colonists were called
Spaniards and assumed to be of a superior race
to the first settlers of the other pueblos, they
made less progress and were more unruly than
the mixed and mongrel inhabitants of the older
pueblos.

Although at the close of the century three
decades had passed since the first settlement was
made in California, the colonists had made but
little progress. Three pueblos of gente de razon
had been founded and a few ranchos granted to
ex-soldiers. Exclusive of the soldiers, the white
population in the year 1800 did not exceed six
hundred. The people lived in the most primi-
tive manner. There was no commerce and no
manufacturing except a little at the missions.
Their houses were adobe huts roofed with tule
thatch. The floor was the beaten earth and the

scant furniture home-made. There was a scarcity
of cloth for clothing. Padre Salazar relates that
when he was at San Gabriel Mission in 1795 a
man who had a thousand horses and cattle in
proportion came there to beg cloth for a shirt,
for none could be had at the pueblo of Los An-
geles nor at the presidio of Santa Barbara.

Hermanagildo Sal, the comandante of San
Francisco, writing to a friend in 1799, says, "I
send you, by the wife of the pensioner Jose
Barbo, one piece of cotton goods and an ounce
of sewing silk. There are no combs and I have
no hope of receiving any for three years." Think
of waiting three years for a comb!

Eighteen missions had been founded at the
close of the century. Except at a few of the
older missions, the buildings were temporary
structures. The neophytes for the most part
were living in wigwams constructed like those
they had occupied in their wild state.

CHAPTER VIII-

THE PASSING OF SPAIN'S DOMINATION.

THE Spaniards were not a commercial peo-
ple. Their great desire was to be let alone
in their American possessions. Philip II.
once promulgated a decree pronouncing death
upon any foreigner who entered the Gulf of
Mexico. It was easy to promulgate a decree or
to pass restrictive laws against foreign trade, but
quite another thing to enforce them.

After the first settlement of California seven-
teen years passed before a foreign vessel entered
any of its ports. The first to arrive were the
two vessels of the French explorer, La Perouse,
who anchored in the harbor of Monterey, Sep-
tember 15, 1786. Being of the same faith, and
France having been an ally of Spain in former
times, he was well received. During his brief
stay he made a study of the mission system and
his observations on it are plainly given. He
found a similarity in it to the slave plantations
of Santo Domingo. November 14, 1792, the
English navigator, Capt. George Vancouver, in
the ship Discovery, entered the Bay of San

Francisco. He was cordially received by the
comandante of the port, Hermanagildo Sal, and
the friars of the mission. On the 20th of the
month, with several of his officers, he visited the
Mission of Santa Clara, where he was kindly
treated. He also visited the Mission of San
Carlos de Monterey. He wrote an interesting
account of his visit and his observations on the
country. Vancouver was surprised at the back-
wardness of the country and the antiquated cus-
toms of the people. He says: "Instead of find-
ing a country tolerably well inhabited, and far
advanced in cultivation, if we except its natural
pastures, flocks of sheep and herds of cattle,
there is not an object to indicate the most re-
mote connection with any European or other
civilized nation." On a subsequent visit, Cap-
tain Vancouver met a chilly reception from the
acting governor, Arrillaga. The Spaniards sus-
pected him of spying out the weakness of their
defenses. Through the English, the Spaniards
became acquainted with the importance and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

value of the fur trade. The bays and lagoons of
California abounded in sea otter. Their skins
were worth in China all the way from $30 to
$100 each. The trade was made a government
monopoly. The skins were to be collected from
the natives, soldiers and others by the mission-
aries, at prices ranging from $2.50 to $10 each,
and turned over to the government officials ap-
pointed to receive them. All trade by private
persons was prohibited. The government was
sole trader. But the government failed to make
the trade profitable. In the closing years of
the century the American smugglers began to
haunt the coast. The restrictions against trade
with foreigners were proscriptive and the penal-
ties for evasion severe, but men will trade under
the most adverse circumstances. Spain was a
long way off, and smuggling was not a very
venal sin in the eyes of layman or churchman.
Fast sailing vessels were fitted out in Boston
for illicit trade on the California coast. Watch-
ing their opportunities, these vessels slipped
into the bays and inlets along the coast. There
was a rapid exchange of Yankee notions for sea
otter skins, the most valued peltry of California,
and the vessels were out to sea before the rev-
enue officers could intercept them. If success-
ful in escaping capture, the profits of a smug-
gling voyage were enormous, ranging from 500
to 1,000 per cent above cost on the goods ex-
changed; but the risks were great. The smug-
gler had no protection; he was an outlaw. He
was the legitimate prey of the padres, the peo-
ple and the revenue officers. The Yankee smug-
gler usually came out ahead. His vessel was
heavily armed, and when speed or stratagem
failed he was ready to fight his way out of a
scrape.

Each year two ships were sent from San
Bias with the memorias — mission and presidio
supplies. These took back a small cargo of the
products of the territory, wheat being the prin-
cipal. This was all the legitimate commerce
allowed California.

The fear of Russian aggression had been one
of the causes that had forced Spain to attempt
the colonization of California. Bering, in 1741,
had discovered the strait that bears his name
and had taken possession, for the Russian gov-

ernment, of the northwestern coast of America.
Four years later, the first permanent Russian
settlement, Sitka, had been made on one of tin-
coast islands. Rumors of the Russian explora-
tions and settlements had reached Madrid and
in 1774 Captain Perez, in the San Antonia, was
sent up the coast to find out what the Russians
were doing.

Had Russian America contained arable land
where grain and vegetables could have been
grown, it is probable that the Russians and
Spaniards in America would not have come in
contact; for another nation, the United States
had taken possession of the intervening coun
try, bordering the Columbia river.

The supplies of breadstuffs for the Sitka col-
onists had to be sent overland across Siberia
or shipped around Cape Horn. Failure of sup-
plies sometimes reduced the colonists to sore
straits. In 1806, famine and diseases incident
to starvation threatened the extinction oi the
Russian colony. Count RezdnofT, a high officer
of the Russian government, had arrived at the
Sitka settlement in September, 1C05. The des-
titution prevailing there induced him to visit
California with the hope of obtaining relief for
the starving colonists. In the ship Juno (pur-
chased from an American trader), with a scurvy
afflicted crew, he made a perilous voyage down
the stormy coast and on the 5th of April, 1806,
anchored safely in the Bay of San Francisco.
He had brought with him a cargo of goods for
exchange but the restrictive commercial regula-
tions of Spain prohibited trade with foreigners.
Although the friars and the people needed the
goods the governor could not allow the ex-
change. Count Rezanoff would be permitted to
purchase grain for cash, but the Russian's ex-
chequer was not plethoric and his ship was al-
ready loaded with goods. Love that laughs at
locksmiths eventually unlocked the shackles
that hampered commerce. Rezanoff fell in love
with Dona Concepcion, the beautiful daughter
of Don Jose Arguello, the comandante of San
Francisco, and an old time friend of the gov-
ernor, Arrillaga. The attraction was mutual.
Through the influence of Dona Concepcion. the
friars and Arguello, the governor was induced
to sanction a plan by which cash was the sup-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

posed medium of exchange on both sides, but
grain on the one side and goods on the other
were the real currency.

The romance of Rezanoff and Dona Concep-
cion had a sad ending. On his journey through
Siberia to St. Petersburg to obtain the consent
of the emperor to his marriage he was killed
by a fall from his horse. It was several years
before the news of his death reached his af-
fianced bride. Faithful to his memory, she never
married, but dedicated her life to deeds of char-
ity. After Rezanoff s visit the Russians came
frequently to California, partly to trade, but
more often to hunt otter. While on these fur
hunting expeditions they examined the coast
north of San Francisco with the design of plant-
ing an agricultural colony where they could
raise grain to supply the settlements in the far
north. In 1812 they founded a town and built
a fort on the coast north of Bodega Bay, which
they named Ross. The fort mounted ten guns.
They maintained a fort at Bodega Bay and also
a small settlement on Russian river. The Span-
iards protested against this aggression and
threatened to drive the Russians out of the ter-
ritory, but nothing came of their protests and
they were powerless to enforce their demands.
The Russian ships came to California for sup-
plies and were welcomed by the people and the
friars if not by the government officials. The
Russian colony at Ross was not a success. The
ignorant soldiers and the Aluets who formed
the bulk of its three or four hundred inhab-
itants, knew little or nothing about farming and
were too stupid to learn. After the decline of
fur hunting the settlement became unprofitable.
In 1 841 the buildings and the stock were sold
by the Russian governor to Capt. John A. Sut-
ter for $30,000. The settlement was abandoned
and the fort and the town are in ruins.

On the 15th of September, 1810, the patriot
priest, Miguel Hidalgo, struck the first blow
for Mexican independence. The revolution
which began in the province of Guanajuato was
at first regarded by the authorities as a mere
riot of ignorant Indians that would be speedily
suppressed. But the insurrection spread rap-
idly. Long years of oppression and cruelty had
instilled into the hearts of the people an undy-

ing hatred for their Spanish oppressors. Hidalgo
soon found himself at the head of a motley
army, poorly armed and undisciplined, but its
numbers swept away opposition. Unfortunately
through over-confidence reverses came and in
March, 181 1, the patriots met an overwhelming
defeat at the bridge of Calderon. Hidalgo was
betrayed, captured and shot. Though sup-
pressed for a time, the cause of independence
was not lost. For eleven years a fratricidal war
was waged — cruel, bloody and devastating. Al-
lende, Mina. Moreles, Aldama, Rayon and other
patriot leaders met death on the field of battle
or were captured and shot as rebels, but "Free-
dom's battle" bequeathed from bleeding sire to
son was won at last.

Of the political upheavals that shook Spain
in the first decades of the century only the faint-
est rumblings reached far distant California.
Notwithstanding the many changes of rulers
that political revolutions and Napoleonic wars
gave the mother country, the people of Califor-
nia remained loyal to the Spanish crown, al-
though at times they must have been in doubt
who wore the crown.

Arrillaga was governor of California when
the war of Mexican independence began. Al-
though born in Mexico he was of pure Spanish
parentage and was thoroughly in sympathy with
Spain in the contest. He did not live to see the
end of the war. He died in 1814 and was suc-
ceeded by Pablo Vicente de Sola. Sola was
Spanish born and was bitterly opposed to the
revolution, even going so far as to threaten
death to any one who should speak in favor of
it. He had received his appointment from
Viceroy Calleja, the butcher of Guanajuato, the
crudest and most bloodthirsty of the vice regal
governors of new Spain. The friars were to a
man loyal to Spain. The success of the repub-
lic meant the downfall of their domination.
They hated republican ideas and regarded
their dissemination as a crime. They were the
ruling power in California. The governors
and the people were subservient to their
wishes.

The decade between 1810 and 1820 was
marked by two important events, the year of the
earthquakes and the year of the insurgents.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

-1

The year 1812 was the Ano de los Temblores.
The seismic disturbance that for forty years or
more had shaken California seemed to concen-
trate in power that year and expend its force
on the mission churches. The massive church
of San Juan Capistrano, the pride of mission
architecture, was thrown down and forty per-
sons killed. The wails of San Gabriel Mission
were cracked and some of the saints shaken out
of their niches. At San Buenaventura there
were three heavy shocks which injured the
church so that the tower and much of the facade
had to be rebuilt. The whole mission site
seemed to settle and the inhabitants, fearful
that they might be engulfed by the sea, moved
up the valley about two miles, where they re-
mained three months. At Santa Barbara both
church and the presidio were damaged and at
Santa Inez the church was shaken down. The
quakes continued for several months and the
people were so terrified that they abandoned
their houses and lived in the open air.

The other important epoch of the decade was
El Aho de los Insurgentes, the year of the in-
surgents. In November, 1818, Bouchard, a
Frenchman in the service of Buenos Ayres and
provided with letters of marque by San Mar-
tain, the president of that republic, to prey upon
Spanish commerce, appeared in the port of
Monterey with two ships carrying sixty-six
guns and three hundred and fifty men. He at-
tacked Monterey and after an obstinate re-
sistance by the Californians, it was taken by the
insurgents and burned. Bouchard next pillaged
Ortega's rancho and burned the buildings.
Then sailing down the coast he scared the Santa
Barbaranos; then keeping on down he looked
into San Pedro, but finding nothing there to
tempt him he kept on to San Juan Capistrano.
There he landed, robbed the mission of a few
articles and drank the padres' wine. Then he
sailed away and disappeared. He left six of his
men in California, among them Joseph Chap-
man of Boston, the first American resident of
California.

In the early part of the last century there
was a limited commerce with Lima. That

being a Spanish dependency, trade with it was
not prohibited. Gilroy, who arrived in Calif' ir
nia in 1814, says in his reminiscences:*

"The only article of export then was tallow,
of which one cargo was sent annually to Callao
in a Spanish ship. This tallow sold for $1.50
per hundred weight in silver or $2.00 in trade
or goods. Hides, except those used for tallow
bags, were thrown away. Wheat, barley and
beans had no market. Nearly everything con-
sumed by the people was produced at home.
There was no foreign trade."

As the revolution in Mexico progressed
times grew harder in California. The mission
memorias ceased to come. No tallow ships from
Callao arrived. The soldiers' pay was years in
arrears and their uniforms in rags. What little
wealth there was in the country was in the
hands of the padres. They were supreme. "The
friars," says Gilroy, "had everything their own
way. The governor and the military were ex-
pected to do whatever the friars requested. The
missions contained all the wealth of the coun-
try." The friars supported the government and
supplied the troops with food from the products
of the neophytes' labor. The crude manufac-
turers of the missions supplied the people with
cloth for clothing and some other necessities.
The needs of the common people were easily
satisfied. They were not used to luxuries nor
were they accustomed to what we would now
consider necessities. Gilroy, in the reminis-
cences heretofore referred to, states that at the
time of his arrival (1S14) "There was not a saw-
mill, whip saw or spoked wheel in California.
Such lumber as was used was cut with an axe.
Chairs, tables and wood floors were not to be
found except in the governor's house. Plates
were rare unless that name could be applied to
the tiles used instead. Money was a rarity.
There were no stores and no merchandise to
sell. There was no employment for a laborer.
The neophytes did all the work and all the busi-
ness of the country was in the hands of the
friars."

*Alta California, June 25, 1865.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER IX.

FROM EMPIRE TO REPUBLIC.

THE condition of affairs in California stead-
ily grew worse as the revolution in Mex-
ico progressed. Sola had made strenuous
efforts to arouse the Spanish authorities of New
Spain to take some action towards benefiting the
territory. After the affair with the insurgent
Bouchard he had appealed to the viceroy for re-
inforcements. In answer to his urgent entreaties
a force of one hundred men was sent from Ma-
zatlan to garrison San Diego and an equal force
from San Bias for Monterey. They reached Cal-
ifornia in August, 1819, and Sola was greatly
rejoiced, but his joy was turned to deep disgust
when he discovered the true character of the re-
inforcement and arms sent him. The only equip-
ments of the soldiers were a few hundred old
worn-out sabers that Sola declared were unfit
for sickles. He ordered them returned to the
comandante of San Bias, who had sent them.
The troops were a worse lot than the arms sent.
They had been taken out of the prisons or con-
scripted from the lowest class of the population
of the cities. They were thieves, drunkards and
vagabonds, who, as soon as landed, resorted to
robberies, brawls and assassinations. Sola wrote
to the viceroy that the outcasts called troops
sent him from the jails of Tepic and San Bias
by their vices caused continual disorders; their
evil example had debauched the minds of the
Indians and that the cost incurred in their col-
lection and transportation had been worse than
thrown away. He could not get rid of them,
so he had to control them as best he could.
Governor Sola labored faithfully to benefit the
country over which he had been placed and to
arouse the Spanish authorities in Mexico to do
something for the advancement of California;
but the government did nothing. Indeed it was
in no condition to do anything. The revolution
would not down. No sooner was one revolution-
ary leader suppressed and the rebellion ap-
parently crushed than there was an uprising in

some other part of the country under a new
leader.

Ten years of intermittent warfare had been
waged — one army of patriots after another had
been defeated and the leaders shot; the strug-
gle for independence was almost ended and the
royalists were congratulating themselves on the
triumph of the Spanish crown, when a sudden
change came and the vice regal government
that for three hundred years had swayed the
destinies of New Spain went down forever.
Agustin Iturbide, a colonel in the royal army,
who in February, 1821, had been sent with a
corps of five thousand men from the capital to
the Sierras near Acapulco to suppress Guerrero,
the last of the patriot chiefs, suddenly changed
his allegiance, raised the banner of the revolu-
tion and declared for the independence of Mex-
ico under the plan of Iguala, so named for the
town where it was first proclaimed. The central
ideas of the plan were "Union, civil and re-
ligious liberty."

There was a general uprising in all parts of
the country and men rallied to the support of the
Army of the Three Guarantees, religion, union,
independence. Guerrero joined forces with
Iturbide and September 21, 1821, at the head
of sixteen thousand men, amid the rejoicing of
the people, they entered the capital. The viceroy
was compelled to recognize the independence of
Mexico. A provisional government under a
regency was appointed at first, but a few months
later Iturbide was crowned emperor, taking the
title of his most serene majesty, Agustin I., by
divine providence and by the congress of the
nation, first constitutional emperor of Mexico.

Sola had heard rumors of the turn affairs
were taking in Mexico, but he had kept the re-
ports a secret and still hoped and prayed for
the success of the Spanish arms. At length a
vessel appeared in the harbor of Monterey float-
ing an unknown flag, and cast anchor beyond

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the reach of the guns of the castillo. The sol-
diers were called to arms. A boat from the ship
put off for shore and landed an officer, who de-
clared himself the bearer of dispatches to Don
Pablo Vicente de Sola, the governor of the
province. "I demand," said he, "to be con-
ducted to his presence in the name of my sov-
ereign, the liberator of Mexico, General Agustin
de Iturbide." There was a murmur of applause
from the soldiers, greatly to the surprise of their
officers, who were all loyalists. Governor Sola
was bitterly disappointed. Only a few days be-
fore he had harangued the soldiers in the square
of the presidio and threatened "to shoot down
any one high or low without the formality of a
trial who dared to say a word in favor of the
traitor Iturbide."

For half a century the banner of Spain had
floated from the flag staff of the presidio of
Monterey. Sadly Sola ordered it lowered and
in its place was hoisted the imperial flag of the
Mexican Empire. A few months pass, Iturbide
is forced to abdicate the throne of empire and
is banished from Mexico. The imperial stand-
ard is supplanted by the tricolor of the republic.
Thus the Californians, in little more than one
year, have passed under three different forms
of government, that of a kingdom, an empire
and a republic, and Sola from the most
loyal of Spanish governors in the kingdom
of Spain has been transformed in a Mexican
republican.

The friars, if possible, were more bitterly dis-
appointed than the governor. They saw in the
success of the republic the doom of their estab-
lishments. Republican ideas were repulsive to
them. Liberty meant license to men to think
for themselves. The shackles of creed and the
fetters of priestcraft would be loosened by the
growth of liberal ideas. It was not strange,
viewing the question from their standpoint, that
they refused to take the oath of allegiance to
the republic. Nearly all of them were Spanish
born. Spain had aided them to plant their mis-
sions, had fostered their establishments and had
made them supreme in the territory. Their al-
legiance was due to the Spanish crown. They
would not transfer it to a republic and they did
not; to the last they were loyal to Spain in

heart, even if they did acquiesce in the ob-
servance of the rule of the republic.

Sola had long desired to be relieved of the
governorship. He was growing old and was in
poor health. The condition of the country wor-
ried him. He had frequently asked to be re-
lieved and allowed to retire from military duty.
His requests were unheeded; the vice regal
government of New Spain had weightier mat-
ters to attend to than requests or the complaints
of the governor of a distant and unimportant
province. The inauguration of the empire
brought him the desired relief.

Under the empire Alta California was allowed
a diputado or delegate in the imperial congress.
Sola was elected delegate and took his de-
parture for Mexico in the autumn of 1822. Luis
Antonio Arguello, president of the provincial
diputacion, an institution that had come into ex-
istence after the inauguration of the empire, be-
came governor by virtue of his position as
president. He was the first hijo del pais or na-
tive of the country to hold the office of gov-
ernor. He was born at San Francisco in 1784,
while his father, an ensign at the presidio, was
in command there. His opportunities for ob-
taining an education were extremely meager,
but he made the best use of what he had. lie
entered the army at sixteen and was, at the time
he became temporary governor, comandante at
San Francisco.

The inauguration of a new form of govern-
ment had brought no relief to California. The
two Spanish ships that had annually brought
los memorias del rey (the remembrances of the
king) had long since ceased to come with their
supplies of money and goods for the soldiers.
The California ports were closed to foreign com-
merce. There was no sale for the products of
the country. So the missions had to throw open
their warehouses and relieve the necessities of
the government.

The change in the form of government had
made no change in the dislike of foreigners,
that was a characteristic of the Spaniard. Dur-
ing the Spanish era very few foreigners had
been allowed to remain in California. Run-
away sailors and shipwrecked mariners, notwith-
standing they might wish to remain in the conn-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

try and become Catholics, were shipped to
Mexico and returned to their own country.
John Gilroy, whose real name was said to be
John Cameron, was the first permanent English
speaking resident of California. When a boy
of eighteen he was left by the captain of a Hud-
son Bay company's ship at Monterey in 1814.
He was sick with the scurvy and not expected
to live. Nursing and a vegetable diet brought
him out all right, but he could not get away.
He did not like the country and every day for
several years he went down to the beach and
scanned the ocean for a foreign sail. When one
did come he had gotten over his home-sickness,
had learned the language, fallen in love, turned
Catholic and married.

In 1822 William E. P. Hartnell, an English-
man, connected with a Lima business house,
visited California and entered into a contract
with Padre Payeras, the prefect of the missions,
for the purchase of hides and tallow. Hartnell
a few years later married a California lady and
became a permanent resident of the territory.
Other foreigners who came about the same time
as Hartnell and who became prominent in Cal-
ifornia were William A. Richardson, an Eng-
lishman; Capt. John R. Cooper of Boston and
William A. Gale, also of Boston. Gale had first
visited California in 1810 as a fur trader. He
returned in 1822 on the ship Sachem, the pioneer
Boston hide drogher. The hide drogher was
in a certain sense the pioneer emigrant ship
of California. It brought to the coast a
number of Americans who became permanent
residents of the territory. California, on ac-
count of its long distance from the world's
marts of trade, had but few products for ex-
change that would bear the cost of shipment.
Its chief commodities for barter during the
Mexican era were hides and tallow. The vast
range of country adapted to cattle raising made
that its most profitable industry. Cattle in-
creased rapidly and required but little care or
attention from their owners. As the native Cal-
ifornians were averse to hard labor cattle rais-
ing became almost the sole industry of the
country.

After the inauguration of a republican form
of government in Mexico some of the most

burdensome restrictions on foreign commerce
were removed. The Mexican Congress of 1824
enacted a colonization law, which was quite
liberal. Under it foreigners could obtain land
from the public domain. The Roman Catholic
religion was the state religion and a foreigner,
before he could become a permanent resident of
the country, acquire property or marry, was
required to be baptized and embrace the doc-
trines of that church. After the Mexican Con-
gress repealed the restrictive laws against for-
eign commerce a profitable trade grew up
between the New England ship owners and the
Californians.

Vessels called hide droghers were fitted out
in Boston with assorted cargoes suitable for the
California trade. Making the voyage by way of
Cape Horn they reached California. Stopping
at the various ports along the coast they ex-
changed their stocks of goods and Yankee
notions for hides and tallow. It took from two
to three years to make a voyage to California
and return to Boston, but the profits on the
goods sold and on the hides received in ex-
change were so large that these ventures paid
handsomely. The arrival of a hide drogher
with its department store cargo was heralded
up and down the coast. It broke the monotony
of existence, gave the people something new
to talk about and stirred them up as nothing
else could do unless possibly a revolution.

"On the arrival of a new vessel from the
United States," says Robinson in his "Life in
California," "every man, woman, boy and girl
took a proportionate share of interest as to the
qualities of her cargo. If the first inquired for
rice, sugar or tobacco, the latter asked, for prints,
silks and satins; and if the boy wanted a Wil-
son's jack knife, the girl hoped that there might
be some satin ribbons for her. Thus the whole
population hailed with eagerness an arrival. Even
the Indian in his unsophisticated style asked for
Panas Colorados and Abalaris — red handker-
chiefs and beads.

"After the arrival of our trading vessel (at San
Pedro) our friends came in the morning flock-
ing on board from all quarters ; and soon a busy
scene commenced afloat and ashore. Boats
were passing to the beach, and men, women

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and children partaking in the general excite-
ment. On shore all was confusion, cattle and
carts laden with hides and tallow, gente de razon
and Indians busily employed in the delivery of
their produce and receiving in return its value
in goods. Groups of individuals seated around
little bonfires upon the ground, and horsemen
racing over the plains in every direction. Thus
the day passed, some arriving, some departing,
till long after sunset, the low white road, lead-
ing across the plains to the town (Los Angeles),
appeared a living panorama."

The commerce of California during the Mex-
ican era was principally carried on by the hide
droghers. The few stores at the pueblos and
presidios obtained their supplies from them
and retailed their goods to customers in the in-
tervals between the arrivals of the department
store droghers.

The year 1824 was marked by a serious out-
break among the Indians of several missions.
Although in the older missionary establish-
ments many of the neophytes had spent half a'
century under the Christianizing influence of
the padres and in these, too, a younger genera-
tion had grown from childhood to manhood
under mission tutelage, yet their Christian train-
ing had not eliminated all the aboriginal sav-
agery from their natures. The California Indians
were divided into numerous small tribes, each
speaking a different dialect. They had never
learned, like the eastern Indians did, the ad-
vantages of uniting against a common enemy.
When these numerous small tribes were gath-
ered into the missions they were kept as far as
it was possible separate and it is said the padres
encouraged their feuds and tribal animosities to
prevent their uniting against the missionaries.
Their long residence in the missions had de-
stroyed their tribal distinctions and merged
them into one body. It had taught them, too,
the value of combination.

How long the Indians had been plotting no
one knew. The conspiracy began among the
neophytes of Santa Ynez and La Purisima, but
it spread to the missions of San Luis Obispo,
Santa Barbara, San Buenaventura, San Fer-
nando and San Gabriel. Their plan was to mas-
sacre the padres and the mission guard and

having obtained arms to kill all the gente
razon and thus free themselves from mission
thralldom and regain their old time freedom.
The plotting had been carried on with great
secrecy. Rumors had passed from mission to
mission arranging the details of the upri.^in-
without the whites suspecting anything. Sunday,
February 22, 1824, was the day set for begin-
ning the slaughter. At the hour of celebrating
mass, when the soldiers and the padres were
within the church, the bloody work was to be-
gin. The plot might have succeeded had not
the Indians at Santa Ynez began their work
prematurely. One account (Hindi's History of
California) says that on Saturday afternoon be-
fore the appointed Sunday they determined to
begin the work by the murder of Padre Fran-
cisco Xavier Una, who was sleeping in a cham-
ber next the mission church. He was warned
by a faithful page. Springing from his couch
and rushing to a window he saw the Indians ap-
proaching. Seizing a musket from several that
were in the room he shot the first Indian that
reached the threshold dead. He seized a sec-
ond musket and laid another Indian low. Tin-
soldiers now rallied to his assistance and the
Indians were driven back; they set fire to the
mission church, but a small body of troops un-
der Sergeant Carrillo, sent from Santa Barbara
to reinforce the mission guard, coming up at
this time, the Indians fled to Purisima. The
fire was extinguished before the church was
consumed. At Purisima the Indians were more-
successful. The mission was defended by Cor-
poral Tapia and five soldiers. The Indians de-
manded that Tapia surrender, but the corporal
refused. The fight began and continued all
night. The Indians set fire to the building, but
all they could burn was the rafters. Tapia, by a
strategic movement, succeeded in collecting all
the soldiers and the women and children inside
the walls of one of the largest buildings from
which the roof had been burnt. From this tin-
Indians could not dislodge him. The fight was
kept up till morning, when one of the Indians,
who had been a mission alcade, made a prop-
osition to the corporal to surrender. Tapia re-
fused to consider it, but Father Bias Ordaz in-
terfered and insisted on a compromise. After

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

much contention Tapia found himself overruled.
The Indians agreed to spare the lives of all on
condition that the whites laid down their arms.
The soldiers laid down their arms and sur-
rendered two small cannon belonging to the
church. The soldiers, the women and the chil-
dren were then allowed to march to Santa Ynez.
While the fight was going on the Indians killed
four white men, two of them, Dolores Sepulveda
and Ramon Satelo, were on their way to Los
Angeles and came to the mission not suspecting
any danger. Seven Indians were killed in the
fight and a number wounded.

The Indians at Santa Barbara began hostilities
according to their prearranged plot. They made
an attack upon the mission. Captain de la
Guerra, who was in command at the presidio,
marched to the mission and a fight of several
hours ensued. The Indians sheltered them-
selves behind the pillars of the corridor and
fought with guns and arrows. After losing sev-
eral of their number they fled to the hills. Four
soldiers were wounded. The report of the up-
rising reached Monterey and measures were
taken at once to subdue the rebellious
neophytes. A force of one hundred men was
sent under Lieut. Jose Estrada to co-operate
with Captain de la Guerra against the rebels.
On the 1 6th of March the soldiers surrounded
the Indians who had taken possession of the
mission church at Purisima and opened fire
upon them. The Indians replied with their cap-
tured cannon, muskets and arrows. Estrada's
artillery battered down the walls of the church.
The Indians, unused to arms, did little execu-
tion. Driven out of the wrecked building, they
attempted to make their escape by flight, but
were intercepted by the cavalry which had been
deployed for that purpose. Finding themselves

hemmed in on all sides the neophytes sur-
rendered. They had lost sixteen killed and a
large number of wounded. Seven of the prison-
ers were shot for complicity in the murder of
Sepulveda and the three other travelers. The
four leaders in the revolt, Mariano Pacomio,
Benito and Bernabe, were sentenced to ten
years hard labor at the presidio and eight oth-
ers to lesser terms. There were four hundred
Indians engaged in the battle.

The Indians of the Santa Barbara missions
and escapes from Santa Ynez and Purisima
made their way over the mountains to the
Tulares. A force of eighty men under com-
mand of a lieutenant was sent against these.
The troops had two engagements with the reb-
els, whom they found at Buenavista Lake and
San Emigdio. Finding his force insufficient to
subdue them the lieutenant retreated to Santa
Barbara. Another force of one hundred and
thirty men under Captain Portilla and Lieuten-
ant Valle was sent after the rebels. Father
Ripoll had induced the governor to offer a gen-
eral pardon. The padre claimed that the In-
dians had not harmed the friars nor committed
sacrilege in the church and from his narrow
view these were about the only venal sins they
could commit. The troops found the fugitive
neophytes encamped at San Emigdio. They
now professed repentance for their misdeeds and
were willing to return to mission life if they
could escape punishment. Padres Ripoll and
Sarria, who had accompanied the expedition,
entered into negotiations with the Indians ; par-
don was promised them for their offenses. They
then surrendered and marched back with the
soldiers to their respective missions. This was
the last attempt of the Indians to escape from
mission rule.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

-7

CHAPTER X.

FIRST DECADE OF MEXICAN RULE.

JOSE MARIA ECHEANDIA, a lieutenant
colonel of the Mexican army, was ap-
pointed governor of the two Californias,
February I, 1825. With his staff officers and
a few soldiers he landed at Loreto June
22. After a delay of a few months at Lo-
reto he marched overland to San Diego,
where he arrived about the middle of October.
He summoned Arguello to meet him there,
which he did and turned over the government,
October 31, 1825. Echeandia established his
capital at San Diego, that town being about the
center of his jurisdiction. This did not suit the
people of Monterey, who became prejudiced
against the new governor. Shortly after his
inauguration he began an investigation of the
attitude of the mission friars towards the re-
public of Mexico. He called padres Sanches,
Zalvidea, Peyri and Martin, representatives of
the four southern missions, to San Diego and
demanded of them whether they would take the
oath of allegiance to the supreme government.
They expressed their willingness and were ac-
cordingly sworn to support the constitution of
1824. Many of the friars of the northern mis-
sions remained contumacious. Among the
most stubborn of these was Padre Vicente
Francisco de Sarria, former president of the
missions. He had resigned the presidency to
escape taking the oath of allegiance and still
continued his opposition. He was put under ar-
rest and an order issued for his expulsion by
the supreme government, but the execution of
the order was delayed for fear that if he were
banished others of the disloyal padres would
abandon their missions and secretly leave the
country. The government was not ready yet to
take possession of the missions. The friars
could keep the neophytes in subjection and
make them work. The business of the country
was in the hands of the friars and any radical
change would have been disastrous.

The national government in 1827 had issued
a decree for the expulsion of Spaniards from
Mexican territory. There were certain classes
of those born in Spain who were exempt from
banishment, but the friars were not among the
exempts. The decree of expulsion reached Cal-
ifornia in 1828; but it was not enforced for the
reason that all of the mission padres except
three were Spaniards. To have sent these out
of the country would have demoralized the mis-
sions. The Spanish friars were expelled from
M exico ; but those in California, although some
of them had boldly proclaimed their willingness
to die for their king and their religion and de-
manded their passports to leave the country,
were allowed to remain in the country. Their
passports were not given them for reasons
above stated. Padres Ripoll and Altimira made
their escape without passports. They secretly
took passage on an American brig lying at
Santa Barbara. Orders were issued to seize the
vessel should she put into any other harbor on
the coast, but the captain, who no doubt had
been liberally paid, took no chance of capture
and the padres eventually reached Spain in
safety. There was a suspicion that the two
friars had taken with them a large amount of
money from the mission funds, but nothing was
proved. It was certain that they carried away
something more than the bag and staff, the only
property allowed them by the rules of their
order.

The most bitter opponent of the new govern-
ment was Father Luis Antonio Martinez of San
Luis Obispo. Before the clandestine departure
of Ripoll and Altimira there were rumors that
he meditated a secret departure from the coun-
try. The mysterious shipment of $6,000 in gold
belonging to the mission on a vessel called the
Santa Apolonia gave credence to the report of
his intended flight. He had been given a pass-
port but still remained in the territory. His

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

outspoken disloyalty and his well known suc-
cess in evading the revenue laws and smuggling
goods into the country had made him particu-
larly obnoxious to the authorities. Governor
Echeandia determined to make an example of
him. He was arrested in February, 1830, and
confined in a room at Santa Barbara. In his
trial before a council of war an attempt was
made to connect him with complicity in the Solis
revolution, but the evidence against him was
weak. By a vote of five to one it was decided
to send him out of the country. He was put
on board an English vessel bound for Callao and
there transferred to a vessel bound for Europe;
he finally arrived safely at Madrid.

Under the empire a diputacion or provincial
legislature had been established in California.
Arguello in 1825 had suppressed this while he
was governor. Echeandia, shortly after his ar-
rival, ordered an election for a new diputacion.
The diputacion made the general laws of the
territory. It consisted of seven members called
vocals. These were chosen by an electoral
junta, the members of which were elected by
the people. The diputacion chose a diputado or
delegate to the Mexican Congress. As it was a
long distance for some of the members to travel
to the territorial capital a suplente or substitute
was chosen for each member, so as to assure a
quorum. The diputacion called by Echeandia
met at Monterey, June 14, 1828. The sessions,
of which there were two each week, were held in
the governor's palacio. This diputacion passed
a rather peculiar revenue law. It taxed domestic
aguardiente (grape brandy) $5 a barrel and
wine half that amount in the jurisdictions of
Monterey and San Francisco; but in the juris-
dictions of Santa Barbara and San Diego the
rates were doubled, brandy was taxed $10 «
a barrel and wine $5. San Diego, Los An-
geles and Santa Barbara were wine producing
districts, while Monterey and San Francisco
were not. As there was a larger consumption of
the product in the wine producing districts than
in the others the law was enacted for revenue
and not for prevention of drinking.

Another peculiar freak of legislation perpe-
trated by this diputacion was the attempt to
change the name of the territory. The supreme

government was memorialized to change the
name of Alta California to that of Montezuma
and also that of the Pueblo de Nuestra Sehora
de los Angeles to that of Villa Victoria de la
Reyna de los Angeles and make it the capital
of the territory. A coat of arms was adopted
for the territory. It consisted of an oval with
the figure of an oak tree on one side, an olive
tree on the other and a plumed Indian in the
center with his bow and quiver, just in the
act of stepping across the mythical straits
of Anian. The memorial was sent to Mexico,,
but the supreme government paid no attention
to it.

The political upheavals, revolutions and coun-
ter revolutions that followed the inauguration
of a republican form of government in Mexico
demoralized the people and produced a prolific
crop of criminals. The jails were always full
and it became a serious question what to do
with them. It was proposed to make California
a penal colony, similar to England's Botany
Bay. Orders were issued to send criminals to
California as a means of reforming their mor-
als. The Californians protested against the
sending of these undesirable immigrants, but in
vain. In February, 1830, the brig Maria Ester
brought eighty convicts from Acapulco to San
Diego. They were not allowed to land there
and were taken to Santa Barbara. What to
do with them was a serious question with the
Santa Barbara authorities. The jail would not
hold a tenth part of the shipment and to turn
them loose in the sparsely settled country was
dangerous to the peace of the community. Fin-
ally, about thirty or forty of the worst of the
bad lot were shipped over to the island of Santa
Cruz. They were given a supply of cattle, some
fishhooks and a few tools and turned loose on
the island to shift for themselves. They staid
on the island until they had slaughtered and
eaten the cattle, then they built a raft and
drifted back to Santa Barbara, where they
quartered themselves on the padres of the mis-
sion. Fifty more were sent from Mexico a few
months later. These shipments of prison exiles
were distributed around among the settlements.
Some served out their time and returned to their
native land, a few escaped over the border,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

others remained in the territory after their time
was up and became fairly good citizens.

The colonization law passed by the Mexican
Congress August 18, 1824, was the first break
in the prescriptive regulations that had pre-
vailed in Spanish-American countries since their
settlement. Any foreigner of good character
who should locate in the country and become a
Roman Catholic could obtain a grant of public
land, not exceeding eleven leagues; but no for-
eigner was allowed to obtain a grant within
twenty leagues of the boundary of a foreign
country nor within ten leagues of the sea coast.
The law of April 14, 1828, allowed foreigners
to become naturalized citizens. The applicant
was required to have resided at least two years
in the country, to be or to become a Roman
Catholic, to renounce allegiance to his former
country and to swear to support the constitution
and laws of the Mexican republic. Quite a
number of foreigners who had been residing
a number of years in California took advantage
of this law and became Mexican citizens by nat-
uralization. The colonization law of Novem-
ber 18, 1828, prescribed a series of rules and
regulations for the making of grants of land.
Colonists were required to settle on and culti-
vate the land granted within a specified time or
forfeit their grants. Any one residing outside
of the republic could not retain possession of
his land. The minimum size of a grant as de-
fined by this law was two hundred varas square
of irrigable land, eight hundred varas square
of arable land (depending on the seasons) and
twelve hundred varas square grazing land. The
size of a house lot was one hundred varas
square.

The Californians had grown accustomed to
foreigners coming to the country by sea, but
they were not prepared to have them come over-
land. The mountains and deserts that inter-
vened between the United States and California
were supposed to be an insurmountable barrier
to foreign immigration by land. It was no doubt
with feelings of dismay, mingled with anger,
that Governor Echeandia received the advance
guard of maldito estranjeros, who came across
the continent. Echeandia hated foreigners and
particularly Americans. The pioneer of over-

land travel from the United States to California
was Capt. Jedediah S. Smith. Smith was born
in Connecticut and when quite young came
with his father to Ohio and located in Ashtabula
county, where he grew to manhood amid the
rude surroundings of pioneer life in the west.
By some means he obtained a fairly good educa-
tion. We have no record of when he began the
life of a trapper. We first hear of him as an
employe of General Ashley in 1822. He had
command of a band of trappers on the waters of
the Snake river in 1824. Afterwards he became
a partner of Ashley under the firm name of
Ashley & Smith and subsequently one of the
members of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company.
The latter company had about 1825 established
a post and fort near Great Salt Lake. From
this, August 22, 1826, Captain Smith with a
band of fifteen hunters and trappers started on
his first expedition to California. His object
was to find some new country that had not been
occupied by a fur company. Traveling in a south-
westerly direction he discovered a river which
he named Adams (after President John Quincy
Adams) now known as the Rio Virgin. This
stream he followed down to its junction with
the Colorado. Traveling down the latter river
he arrived at the Mojave villages, where he
rested fifteen days. Here he found two wander-
ing neophytes, who guided his party across the
desert to the San Gabriel mission, where he and
his men arrived safely early in December, 1826.

The arrival of a party of armed Americans
from across the mountains and deserts alarmed
the padres and couriers were hastily dispatched
to Governor Echeandia at San Diego. The
Americans were placed under arrest and com-
pelled to give up their arms. Smith was taken
to San Diego to give an account of himself. I [e
claimed that he had been compelled to enter
the territory on account of the loss of horses
and a scarcity of provisions. He was finally re-
leased from prison upon the endorsement of
several American ship captains and supercar-
goes who were then at San Diego. He was al-
lowed to return to San Gabriel, where he pur-
chased horses and supplies. He moved his camp
to San Bernardino, where he remained until
February. The authorities had grown uneasy

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

at his continued presence in the country and
orders were sent to arrest him, but before this
could be done he left for the Tulare country by
way of Cajon Pass. He trapped on the tribu-
taries of the San Joaquin. By the 1st of May
he and his party had reached a fork of the Sac-
ramento (near where the town of Folsom now
stands). Here he established a summer camp
and the river ever since has been known as the
American fork from that circumstance.

Here again the presence of the Americans
worried the Mexican authorities. Smith wrote
a conciliatory letter to Padre Duran, president
of the missions, informing him that he had
"made several efforts to pass over the moun-
tains, but the snow being so deep I could not
succeed in getting over. I returned to this
place, it being the only point to kill meat, to
wait a few weeks until the snow melts so that I
can go on." "On May 20, 1827," Smith writes,
"with two men, seven horses and two mules, I
started from the valley. In eight days we
crossed Mount Joseph, losing two horses and
one mule. After a march of twenty days east-
ward from Mount Joseph (the Sierra Nevadas)
I reached the southwesterly corner of the Great
Salt Lake. The country separating it from the
mountains is arid and without game. Often we
had no water for two days at a time. When
we reached Salt Lake we had left only one horse
and one mule, so exhausted that they could
hardly carry our slight baggage. We had been
forced to eat the horses that had succumbed."

Smith's route over the Sierras to Salt Lake
was substantially the same as that followed by the
overland emigration of later years. He discov-
ered the Humboldt, which he named the Mary
river, a name it bore until changed by Fremont
in 1845. He was the first white man to cross
the Sierra Nevadas. Smith left his party of
trappers except the two who accompanied him
in the Sacramento valley. He returned next
year with reinforcements and was ordered out
of the country by the governor. He traveled up
the coast towards Oregon. On the Umpqua
river he was attacked by the Indians. All his
party except himself and two others were mas-
sacred. He lost all of his horses and furs. He
reached Fort Vancouver, his clothing torn to

rags and almost starved to death. In 1831 he
started with a train of wagons to Santa Fe on a
trading expedition. While alone searching for
water near the Cimarron river he was set upon
by a party of Indians and killed. Thus perished
by the hands of cowardly savages in the wilds of
New Mexico a man who, through almost in-
credible dangers and sufferings, had explored
an unknown region as vast in extent as that
which gave fame and immortality to the African
explorer, Stanley; and who marked out trails
over mountains and across deserts that Fre-
mont following years afterwards won the title
of "Pathfinder of the Great West." Smith led
the advance guard of the fur trappers to Cali-
fornia. Notwithstanding the fact that they were
unwelcome visitors these adventurers continued
to come at intervals up to 1845. They trapped
on the tributaries of the San Joaquin, Sacramento
and the rivers in the northern part of the terri-
tory. A few of them remained in the country
and became permanent residents, but most of
them sooner or later met death by the savages.

Capt. Jedediah S. Smith marked out two of
the great immigrant trails by which the overland
travel, after the discovery of gold, entered Cal-
ifornia, one by way of the Humboldt river over
the Sierra Nevadas, the other southerly from
Salt Lake, Utah Lake, the Rio Virgin, across
the Colorado desert, through the Cajon Pass to
Los Angeles. A third immigrant route was
blazed by the Pattie party. This route led from
Santa Fe, across New Mexico, down the Gila
to the Colorado and from thence across the
desert through the San Gorgonio Pass to Los
Angeles.

This party consisted of Sylvester Pattie,
James Ohio Pattie, his son, Nathaniel M.
Pryor, Richard Laughlin, Jesse Furguson, Isaac
Sl'over, William Pope and James Puter. The
Patties left Kentucky in 1824 and followed trap-
ping in New Mexico and Arizona until 1827;
the elder Pattie for a time managing the cop-
per mines of Santa Rita. In May, 1827, Pattie
the elder, in command of a party of thirty trap-
pers and hunters, set out to trap the tributaries
of the Colorado. Losses by Indian hostilities,
by dissensions and desertions reduced the party
to eight persons. December 1st, 1827, while

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

these were encamped on the Colorado near the
mouth of the Gila, the Yuma Indians stole all
their horses. They constructed rafts and floated
down the Colorado, expecting to find Spanish
settlements on its banks, where they hoped to
procure horses to take them back to Santa Fe.
They floated down the river until they encoun-
tered the flood tide from the gulf. Finding it
impossible to go ahead on account of the tide
or back on account of the river current, they
landed, cached their furs and traps and with
two days' supply of beaver meat struck out
westerly across the desert. After traveling for
twenty-four days and suffering almost incredible
hardships they reached the old Mission of Santa
Catalina near the head of the Gulf of California.
Here they were detained until news of their ar-
rival could be sent to Governor Echeandia at
San Diego. A guard of sixteen soldiers was sent
for them and they were conducted to San Diego,
where they arrived February 27, 1828. Their
arms were taken from them and they were put
in prison. The elder Pattie died during their
imprisonment. In September all the party ex-
cept young Pattie, who was retained as a host-
age, were released and permitted to go after
their buried furs. They found their furs had been
ruined by the overflow of the river. Two of the
party, Slover and Pope, made their way back
to Santa Fe; the others returned, bringing with
them their beaver traps. They were again im-
prisoned by Governor Echeandia, but were fin-
ally released.

Three of the party, Nathaniel M. Pryor,
Richard Laughlin and Jesse Furguson, became
permanent residents of California. Young Pat-
tie returned to the United States by way of
Mexico. After his return, with the assistance
of the Rev. Timothy Flint, he wrote an account
of his adventures, which was published in Cin-
cinnati in 1833, under the title of "Pattie's Nar-
rative." Young Pattie was inclined to exaggera-
tion. In his narrative he claims that with vac-
cine matter brought by his father from the
Santa Rita mines he vaccinated twenty-two
thousand people in California. In Los Angeles
alone, he vaccinated twenty-five hundred,
which was more than double the population of
the town in 1828. He took a contract from the

president of the missions to vaccinate all the
neophytes in the territory. When his job was
finished the president offered him in pay live-
hundred cattle and five hundred mules
with land to pasture his stock on condition
he would become a Roman Catholic and
a citizen of Mexico. Pattie scorned the of-
fer and roundly upbraided the padre for taking
advantage of him. lie had previously given
Governor Eacheandia a tongue lashing and had
threatened to shoot him on sight. From his
narrative he seems to have put in most of his
time in California blustering and threatening to
shoot somebody.

Another famous trapper of this period was
"Peg Leg" Smith. His real name was Thomas
L. Smith. It is said that in a fight with the
Indians his leg below the knee was shattered by
a bullet. He coolly amputated his leg at the
knee with no other instrument than his hunting
knife. Fie wore a wooden leg and from this
came his nickname. He first came to California
in 1829. He was ordered out of the country.
He and his party took their departure, but with
them went three or four hundred California
horses. He died in a San Francisco hospital in
1866.

Ewing Young, a famous captain of trappers,
made several visits to California from 1830 to
1837. In 1831 he led a party of thirty hunters
and trappers, among those of his party who
remained in California was Col. J. J. Warner,
who became prominent in the territory and
state. In 1837 Ewing Young with a party of
sixteen men came down from Oregon, where
he finally located, to purchase cattle for the new
settlements on the Willamette river. They
bought seven hundred cattle at $3 per head from
the government and drove them overland to
Oregon, reaching there after a toilsome journey
of four months with six hundred. Young died
in Oregon in 1841.

From the downfall of Spanish domination in
1822, to the close of that decade there had been
but few political disturbances in California. The
only one of any consequence was Solis' and
Herrera's attempt to revolutionize the territory
and seize the government. Jose Maria Herrera
had come to California as a commissioner of

<J2

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the commissary department, but after a short
term of service had been removed from office
for fraud. Joaquin Solis was a convict who was
serving a ten years sentence of banishment from
Mexico. The ex-official and the exile with oth-
ers of damaged character combined to overturn
the government.

On the night of November 12, 1829, Solis,
with a band of soldiers that he had induced to
join his standard, seized the principal govern-
ment officials at Monterey and put them in
prison. At Solis' solicitation Herrera drew up
a pronunciamento. It followed the usual line
of such documents. It began by deploring the
evils that had come upon the territory through
Echeandia's misgovernment and closed with
promises of reformation if the revolutionists
should obtain control of the government. To
obtain the sinews of war the rebels seized
$3,000 of the public funds. This was dis-
tributed among the soldiers and proved a great
attraction to the rebel cause. Solis with twen-
ty men went to San Francisco and the sol-
diers there joined his standard. Next he
marched against Santa Barbara with an army
of one hundred and fifty men. Echeandia on
hearing of the revolt had marched northward
with all the soldiers he could enlist. The two
armies met at Santa Ynez. Solis opened fire on
the governor's army. The fire was returned.
Solis' men began to break away and soon the
army and its valiant leader were in rapid flight.
Pacheco's cavalry captured the leaders of the
revolt. Herrara, Solis and thirteen others were
shipped to Mexico under arrest to be tried for
their crimes. The Mexican authorities, always
lenient to California revolutionists, probably
from a fellow feeling, turned them all loose
and Herrera was sent back to fill his former
office.

Near the close of his term Governor
Echeandia formulated a plan for converting the
mission into pueblos. To ascertain the fitness
of the neophytes for citizenship he made an in-
vestigation to find out how many could read and
write. He found so very few that he ordered
schools opened at the missions. A pretense was
made of establishing schools, but very little was
accomplished. The padres were opposed to edu-

cating the natives for the same reason that the
southern slave-holders were opposed to educat-
ing the negro, namely, that an ignorant people
were more easily kept in subjection. Echeandia's
plan of secularization was quite elaborate and
dealt fairly with the neophytes. It received the
sanction of the diputacion when that body met
in July, 1830, but before anything could be done
towards enforcing it another governor was ap-
pointed. Echeandia was thoroughly hated by
the mission friars and their adherents. Robin-
son in his "Life in California" calls him a man
of vice and makes a number of damaging asser-
tions about his character and conduct, which
are not in accordance with the facts. It was dur-
ing Echeandia's term as governor that the motto
of Mexico, Dios y Libertad (God and Liberty),
was adopted. It became immensely popular
and was used on all public documents and often
in private correspondence.

A romantic episode that has furnished a
theme for fiction writers occurred in the last
year of Echeandia's rule. It was the elopement
of Henry D. Fitch with Dona Josefa, daughter
of Joaquin Carrillo of San Diego. Fitch was a
native of New Bedford, Mass. He came to Cal-
ifornia in 1826 as master of the Maria Ester.
He fell in love with Doha Josefa. There were
legal obstructions to their marriage. Fitch was
a foreigner and a Protestant. The latter objec-
tion was easily removed by Fitch becoming a
Catholic. The Dominican friar who was to per-
form the marriage service, fearful that he might
incur the wrath of the authorities, civil and cler-
ical, refused to perform the ceremony, but sug-
gested that there were other countries where
the laws were less strict and offered to go beyond
the limits of California and marry them. It is
said that at this point Doha Josefa said: "Why
don't you carry me off, Don Enrique?" The
suggestion was quickly acted upon. The next
night the lady, mounted on a steed with her
cousin, Pio Pico, as an escort, was secretly
taken to a point on the bay shore where a boat
was waiting for her. The boat put off to the
Vulture, where Captain Fitch received her on
board and the vessel sailed for Valparaiso,
where the couple were married. A year later
Captain Fitch returned to California with his

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

wife and infant son. At Monterey Fitch was
arrested on an order of Padre Sanchez of San
Gabriel and put in prison. His wife was also
placed under arrest at the house of Captain
Cooper. Fitch was taken to San Gabriel for trial,
"his offenses being most heinous." At her in-
tercession, Governor Echeandia released Mrs.
Fitch and allowed her to go to San Gabriel,
where her husband was imprisoned in one of the
rooms of the mission. This act of clemency
greatly enraged the friar and his fiscal, Pa-
lomares, and they seriously considered the ques-
tion of arresting the governor. The trial
dragged along for nearly a month. Many wit-
nesses were examined and many learned points
of clerical law discussed. Vicar Sanchez finally
gave his decision that the marriage at Val-
paraiso, though not legitimate, was not null and
void, but valid. The couple were condemned

to do penance by "presenting themselves in
church with lighted candles in their hands to
hear high mass for three feast days and recite
together for thirty days one-third of the rosary
of the holy virgin."* In addition to these joint
penances the vicar inflicted an additional pen-
alty on Fitch in these words: "Yet considering
the great scandal which Don Enrique has
caused in this province I condemn him to give
as penance and reparation a bell of at least fifty
pounds in weight for the church at Los An-
geles, which barely has a borrowed one." Fitch
and his wife no doubt performed the joint pen-
ance imposed upon them, but the church at Los
Angeles had to get along with its borrowed bell.
Don Enrique never gave it one of fifty pounds
or any other weight.

*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. III-144.

CHAPTER XI.

REVOLUTIONS— THE HIJAR COLONISTS.

ANUEL VICTORIA was appointed
governor in March, 1830, but did not
reach California until the last month

of the year. Victoria very soon became un-
popular. He undertook to overturn the civil
authority and substitute military rule. He
recommended the abolition of the ayunta-
mientos and refused to call together the ter-
ritorial diputacion. He exiled Don Abel
Stearns and Jose Antonio Carrillo; and at dif-
ferent times, on trumped-up charges, had half
a hundred of the leading citizens of Los An-
geles incarcerated in the pueblo jail. Alcalde
Vicente Sanchez was the petty despot of the
pueblo, who carried out the tyrannical decrees
of his master, Victoria. Among others who
were imprisoned in the cuartel was Jose Maria
Avila. Avila was proud, haughty and over-
bearing. He had incurred the hatred of both
Victoria and Sanchez. Sanchez, under orders
from Victoria, placed Avila in prison, and to
humiliate him put him in irons. Avila brooded
over the indignities inflicted upon him and
vowed to be revenged.

Victoria's persecutions became so unbearable
that Pio Pico, Juan Bandini and Jose Antonio
Carrillo raised the standard of revolt at San
Diego and issued a pronunciamento, in which
they set forth the reasons why they felt them-
selves obliged to rise against the tyrant, Vic-
toria. Pablo de Tortilla, comandantc of the
presidio of San Diego, and his officers, with a
force of fifty soldiers, joined the revolutionists
and marched to Los Angeles. Sanchez's pris-
oners were released and he was chained up in
the pueblo jail. Here Portilla's force was re-
cruited to two hundred men. Avila and a num-
ber of the other released prisoners joined the
revolutionists, and all marched forth to meet
Victoria, who was moving southward with an
armed force to suppress the insurrection. The
two forces met on the plains of Cahuenga, west
of the pueblo, at a place known as the Lomitas
de la Canada de Breita. The sight of his per-
secutor so infuriated Avila that alone he rushed
upon him to run him through with his lance.
Captain Pacheco, of Victoria's staff, parried the
lance thrust. Avila shot him dead with one of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

his pistols and again attacked the governor and
succeeded in wounding him, when he himself
received a pistol ball that unhorsed him. After
a desperate struggle (in which he seized Vic-
toria by the foot and dragged him from his
horse) he was shot by one of Victoria's soldiers.
Portilla's army fell back in a panic to Los An-
geles and Victoria's men carried the wounded
governor to the Mission San Gabriel, where
his wounds were dressed by Joseph Chapman,
who, to his many other accomplishments, added
that of amateur surgeon. Some citizens who
had taken no part in the fight brought the
bodies of Avila and Pacheco to the town.
"They were taken to the same house, the same
hands rendered them the last sad rites, and
they were laid side by side. Side by side knelt
their widows and mingled their tears, while
sympathizing countrymen chanted the solemn
prayers of the church for the repose of the
souls of these untimely dead. Side by side be-
neath the orange and the olive in the little
churchyard upon the plaza sleep the slayer and
the slain."*

Next day, Victoria, supposing himself mor-
tally wounded, abdicated and turned over the
governorship of the territory to Echeandia. He
resigned the office December 9, 183 1, having
been governor a little over ten months. When
Victoria was able to travel he was sent to San
Diego, from where he was deported to Mexico,
San Diego borrowing $125 from the ayunta-
miento of Los Angeles to pay the expense of
shipping him out of the country. Several years
afterwards the money had not been repaid, and
the town council began proceedings to recover
it, but there is no record in the archives to show
that it was ever paid. And thus it was that
California got rid of a bad governor and Los
Angeles incurred a bad debt.

January 10, 1832, the territorial legislature
met at Los Angeles to choose a "gefe politico,"
or governor, for the territory. Echeandia was
invited to preside but replied from San Juan
Capistrano that he was busy getting Victoria
out of the country. The diputacion, after wait-
ing some time and receiving no satisfaction

♦Stephen C. Foster.

from Echeandia whether he wanted the office
or not, declared Pio Pico, by virtue of his office
of senior vocal, "gefe politico."

No sooner had Pico been sworn into office
than Echeandia discovered that he wanted the
office and wanted it badly. He protested against
the action of the diputacion and intrigued
against Pico. Another revolution was threat-
ened. Los Angeles favored Echeandia, al-
though all the other towns in the territory had
accepted Pico. (Pico at that time was a resi-
dent of San Diego.) A mass meeting was called
on February 12, 1832, at Los Angeles, to dis-
cuss the question whether it should be Pico or
Echeandia. I give the report of the meeting in
the quaint language of the pueblo archives:

"The town, acting in accord with the Most
Illustrious Ayuntamiento, answered in a loud
voice, saying they would not admit Citizen Pio
Pico as 'gefe politico,' but desired that Lieut.-
Col. Citizen Jose Maria Echeandia be retained
in office until the supreme government appoint.
Then the president of the meeting, seeing the
determination of the people, asked the motive or
reason of refusing Citizen Pio Pico, who was
of unblemished character. To this the people
responded that while it was true that Citizen
Pio Pico was to some extent qualified, yet they
preferred Lieut.-Col. Citizen Jose M. Echean-
dia. The president of the meeting then asked
the people whether they had been bribed, or
was it merely insubordination that they op-
posed the resolution of the Most Excellent Di-
putacion? Whereupon the people answered
that they had not been bribed, nor were they
insubordinate, but that they opposed the pro-
posed 'gefe politico' because he had not been
named by the supreme government."

At a public meeting February 19 the matter
was again brought up. Again the people cried
out "they would not recognize or obey any
other gefe politico than Echeandia." The Most
Illustrious Ayuntamiento opposed Pio Pico for
two reasons: "First, because his name appeared
first on the plan to oust Gefe Politico Citizen
Manuel Victoria," and "Second, because he,
Pico, had not sufficient capacity to fulfil the
duties of the office." Then Jose Perez and Jose
Antonio Carrillo withdrew from the meeting,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

saying they would not recognize Echeandia as
"gefe politico." Pico, after holding the office
for twenty days, resigned for the sake of peace.
And this was the length of Pico's first term as
governor.

Echeandia, by obstinacy and intrigue, had ob-
tained the coveted office, "gefe politico," but he
did not long enjoy it in peace. News came
from Monterey that Capt. Agustin V. Zamo-
rano had declared himself governor and was
gathering a force to invade the south and en-
force his authority. Echeandia began at once
marshaling his forces to oppose him. Ybarra,
Zamarano's military chief, with a force of one
hundred men, by a forced march, reached Paso
de Bartolo, on the San Gabriel river, where,
fifteen years later, Stockton fought the Mexican
troops under Flores. Here Ybarra found Cap-
tain Borroso posted with a piece of artillery and
fourteen men. He did not dare to attack him.
Echeandia and Borroso gathered a force of a
thousand neophytes at Paso de Bartolo, where
they drilled them in military evolutions. Ybar-
ra's troops had fallen back to Santa Barbara,
where he was joined by Zamorano with rein-
forcements. Ybarra's force was largely made up
of ex-convicts and other undesirable characters,
who took what they needed, asking no questions
of the owners. The Angelenos, fearing those
marauders, gave their adhesion to Zamorano's
plan and recognized him as military chief of the
territory. Captain Borroso, Echeandia's faith-
ful adherent, disgusted with the fickleness of
the Angelenos, at the head of a thousand
mounted Indians, threatened to invade the re-
calcitrant pueblo, but at the intercession of the
frightened inhabitants this modern Coriolanus
turned aside and regaled his neophyte retainers
on the fat bullocks of the Mission San Gabriel,
much to the disgust of the padres. The neo-
phyte warriors were disbanded and sent to their
respective missions.

A peace was patched up betwen Zamorano
and Echeandia. Alta California was divided
into two territories. Echeandia was given juris-
diction over all south of San Gabriel and Zamo-
rano all north of San Fernando. This division
apparently left a neutral district, or "no man's
land," between. Whether Los Angeles was in

this neutral territory the records do not show.
If it was, it is probable that neither of the gov-
ernors wanted the job oi governing the rebel-
lious pueblo.

In January, 1833, Governor Figueroa arrived
in California. Echeandia and Zamorano each
surrendered his half of the divided territory to
the newly appointed governor, and California
was united and at peace. Figueroa proved to
be the right man for the times. He conciliated
the factions and brought order out of chaos.
The two most important events in Figueroa's
term of office were the arrival of the Ilijar Col-
ony in California and the secularization of the
missions. These events were most potent fac-
tors in the evolution of the territory.

In 1833 the first California colonization
scheme was inaugurated in Mexico. At the
head of this was Jose Maria Hijar, a Mexican
gentleman of wealth and influence. He was
assisted in its promulgation by Jose M. Padres,
an adventurer, who had been banished from
California by Governor Victoria. Padres, like
some of our modern real estate boomers, pic-
tured the country as an earthly paradise — an
improved and enlarged Garden of Eden.
Among other inducements held out to the colo-
nists, it is said, was the promise of a division
among them of the mission property and a dis-
tribution of the neophytes for servants.

Headquarters were established at the city
of Mexico and two hundred and fifty colonists
enlisted. Each family received a bonus of
$10, and all were to receive free transporta-
tion to California and rations while on the jour-
ney. Each head of a family was promised a
farm from the public domain, live stock and
farming implements; these advances to be paid
for on the installment plan. The orignal plan was
to found a colony somewhere north of San
Francisco bay, but this was not carried out
Two vessels were dispatched with the colonists
— the Morelos and the Natalia. The latter was
compelled to put into San Diego on account of
sickness on board. She reached that port Sep-
tember 1, 1834. A part of the colonists on
board her were sent to San Pedro and from
there they were taken to Los Angeles and San
Gabriel. The Morelos reached Monterey Sep-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tcmber 25. Hijar had been appointed governor
of California by President Farias, but after the
sailing of the expedition, Santa Ana, who had
succeeded Farias, dispatched a courier over-
land with a countermanding order. By one of
the famous rides of history, Amador, the courier,
made the journey from the city of Mexico to
Monterey in forty days and delivered his mes-
sage to Governor Figueroa. When Hijar ar-
rived he found to his dismay that he was only
a private citizen of the territory instead of its
governor. The colonization scheme was aban-
doned and the immigrants distributed them-
selves throughout the territory. Generally they
were a good class of citizens, and many of them
became prominent in California affairs.

That storm center of political disturbances,
Los Angeles, produced but one small revolution
during Figueroa 's term as governor. A party
of fifty or sixty Sonorans, some of whom were
Hijar colonists who were living either in the
town or its immediate neighborhood, assembled
at Los Nietos on the night of March '/, 1835.
They formulated a pronunciamiento against
Don Jose Figueroa, in which they first vigor-
ously arraigned him for sins of omission and
commission and then laid down their plan of
government of the territory. Armed with this
formidable document and a few muskets and
lances, these patriots, headed by Juan Gallado,
a cobbler, and Felipe Castillo, a cigarmaker, in
the gray light of the morning, rode into the
pueblo, took possession of the town hall and
the big cannon and the ammunition that had

been stored there when the Indians of San Luis
Rev had threatened hostilities. The slumbering
inhabitants were aroused from their dreams of
peace by the drum beat of war. The terrified
citizens rallied to the juzgado, the ayuntamiento
met, the cobbler statesman, Gallado, presented
his plan; it was discussed and rejected. The
revolutionists, after holding possession of the
pueblo throughout the day, tired, hungry and
disappointed in not receiving their pay for sav-
ing the country, surrendered to the legal author-
ities the real leaders of the revolution and
disbanded. The leaders proved to be Torres,
a clerk, and Apalategui, a doctor, both supposed
to be emissaries of Hijar. They were imprisoned
at San Gabriel. When news of the revolt
reached Figueroa he had Hijar and Padres ar-
rested for complicity in the outbreak. Hijar,
with half a dozen of his adherents, was shipped
back to Mexico. And thus the man who the
year before had landed in California with a
commission as governor and authority to take
possession of all the property belonging to the
missions returned to his native land an exile.
His grand colonization scheme and his "Com-
pania Cosmopolitana" that was to revolutionize
California commerce were both disastrous fail-
ures.

Governor Jose Figueroa died at Monterey
on the 29th of September, 1835. He is generally
regarded as the best of the Mexican governors
sent to California. He was of Aztec extraction
and took a great deal of pride in his Indian
blood.

CHAPTER XII.

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE MISSIONS.

THE Franciscan Missions of Alta Califor-
nia have of late been a prolific theme
for a certain class of writers and espe-
cially have they dwelt upon the secularization
of these establishments. Their productions
have added little or nothing to our previous
knowledge of these institutions. Carried away
by sentiment these writers draw pictures of mis-
sion life that are unreal, that are purely imag-

inary, and aroused to indignation at the injus-
tice they fancy was done to their ideal institu-
tions they deal out denunciations against the
authorities that brought about secularization as
unjust as they are undeserved. Such expres-
sions as "the robber hand of secularization," and
"the brutal and thievish disestablishment of the
missions," emanate from writers who seem to
be ignorant of the purpose for which the mis-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

sions were founded, and who ignore, or who
do not know, the causes which brought about
their secularization.

It is an historical fact known to all acquainted
with California history that these establishments
were not intended by the Crown of Spain to
become permanent institutions. The purpose
for which the Spanish government fostered and
protected them was to Christianize the Indians
and make of them self-supporting citizens. Very
early in its history, Governor Borica, Fages and
other intelligent Spanish officers in California
discovered the weakness of the mission system.
Governor Borica, writing in 1796, said: "Ac-
cording to the laws the natives are to be free
from tutelage at the end of ten years, the mis-
sions then becoming doctrinairs, but those of
New California, at the rate they are advancing,
will not reach the goal in ten centuries; the rea-
son God knows, and men, too, know something
about it."

The tenure by which the mission friars held
their lands is admirably set forth in William
Carey Jones' "Report on Land Titles in Cali-
fornia," made in 1850. He says, "It had been
supposed that the lands they (the missions) oc-
cupied were grants held as the property of the
church or of the misson establishments as cor-
porations. Such, however, was not the case;
all the missions in Upper California were estab-
lished under the direction and mainly at the
expense of the government, and the missionaries
there had never any other right than to the
occupation and use of the lands for the purpose
of the missions and at the pleasure of the gov-
ernment. This is shown by the history and
principles of their foundation, by the laws in
relation to them, by the constant practice of
the government toward them and, in fact, by the
rules of the Franciscan order, which forbid its
members to possess property."

With the downfall of Spanish domination in
Mexico came the beginning of the end of mis-
sionary rule in California. The majority of the
mission padres were Spanish born. In the war
of M exican independence their sympathies were
with their mother country, Spain. After Mex-
ico attained her independence, some of them
refused to acknowledge allegiance to the repub-
7

lie. The Mexican authorities feared and dis-
trusted them. In this, in part, they found a pre-
text for the disestablishment of the missions and
the confiscation of the mission estates. There
was another cause or reason for secularization
more potent than the loyalty of the padres to
Spain. Few forms of land monopoly have ever
exceeded that in vogue under the mission - \ -u in
of California. From San Diego to San Fran-
cisco bay the twenty missions established under
Spanish rule monopolized the greater part of the
fertile land between the coast range and the sea.
The limits of one mission were said to cover
the intervening space to the limits of the next
There was but little left for other settlers. A
settler could not obtain a grant of land if the
padres of the nearest mission objected.

The twenty-four ranchos owned by the Mis-
sion San Gabriel contained about a million and
a half acres and extended from the sea to the
San Bernardino mountains. The greatest
neophyte population of San Gabriel was in 181 7,
when it reached 1,701. Its yearly average for
the first three decades of the present century
did not exceed 1,500. It took a thousand acres
of fertile land under the mission system to sup-
port an Indian, even the smallest papoose of the
mission flock. It is not strange that the people
clamored for a subdivision of the mission estates;
and secularization became a public necessity.
The most enthusiastic admirer of the missions
to-day, had he lived in California seventy years
ago, would no doubt have been among the loud-
est in his wail against the mission system.

The abuse heaped upon the Mexican authori-
ties for their secularization of these institutions
is as unjust as it is unmerited. The act of the
Mexican Congress of August 17, 1833, was
not the initiative movement towards their dis-
establishment. Indeed in their foundation their
secularization, their subdivision into pueblos,
was provided for and the local authorities were
never without lawful authority over them. In
the very beginning of missionary work in Alta
California the process of secularizing the mis-
sion establishments was mapped out in the fol-
lowing "Instructions given by Viceroy Rucarili
August 17, 1773, to the comandante of the new
establishments of San Diego and Monterey.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Article 15, when it shall happen that a mission
is to be formed into a pueblo or village the
comandante will proceed to reduce it to the civil
and economical government, which, according
to the laws, is observed by other villages of this
kingdom; their giving it a name and declaring
for its patron the saint under whose memory
and protection the mission was founded."

The purpose for which the mission was
founded was to aid in the settlement of the
country, and to convert the natives to Christian-
ity. "These objects accomplished the mission-
ary's labor was considered fulfilled and the es-
tablishment subject to dissolution. This view
of their purpose and destiny fully appears in
the tenor of the decree of the Spanish Cortes
of September 13, 1813. It was passed in conse-
quence of a complaint by the Bishop of Guiana
of the evils that affected that province on ac-
count of the Indian settlements in charge of
missions not being delivered to the ecclesiastical
ordinary, although thirty, forty and fifty years
had passed since the reduction and conversion
of the Indians."*

The Cortes decreed 1st, that all the new
reduciones y doctrinairs (settlements of newly
converted Indians) not yet formed into parishes
of the province beyond the sea which were in
charge of missionary monks and had been ten
years subjected should be delivered immediately
to the respective ecclesiastical ordinaries (bish-
ops) without resort to any excuse or pretext
conformably to the laws and cedulas in that
respect. Section 2nd, provided that the secular
clergy should attend to the spiritual wants of
these curacies. Section 3rd, the missionary
monks relieved from the converted settlements
shall proceed to the conversion of other
heathen."

The decree of the Mexican Congress, passed
November 20, 1833, for the secularization of the
missions of Upper and Lower California, was
very similar in its provisions to the decree of the
Spanish Cortes of September, 181 3. The Mex-
ican government simply followed &t example
of Spain and in the conversion 01 tne missions
into pueblos was attempting to enforce a prin-

*William Carey Jones' Report.

ciple inherent in the foundation of the mission-
ary establishments. That secularization resulted
disastrously to the Indians was not the fault
of the Mexican government so much as it was
the defect in the industrial and intellectual
training of the neophytes. Except in the case
of those who were trained for choir services in
the churches there was no attempt made to
teach the Indians to read or write. The padres
generally entertained a poor opinion of the
neophytes' intellectual ability. The reglamento
governing the secularization of the missions,
published by Governor Echeandia in 1830, but
not enforced, and that formulated by the diputa-
cion under Governor Figueroa in i834,approved
by the Mexican Congress and finally enforced
in 1834-5-6, were humane measures. These reg-
ulations provided for the colonization of the
neophytes into pueblos or villages. A portion of
the personal property and a part of the lands
held by the missions were to be distributed
among the Indians as follows:

"Article 5 — To each head of a family and all
who are more than twenty years old, although
without families, will be given from the lands
of the mission, whether temporal (lands depend-
ent on the seasons) or watered, a lot of ground
not to contain more than four hundred varas
(yards) in length, and as many in breadth not
less than one hundred. Sufficient land for water-
ing the cattle will be given in common. The
outlets or roads shall be marked out by each vil-
lage, and at the proper time the corporation
lands shall be designated." This colonization
of the neophytes into pueblos would have
thrown large bodies of the land held by the mis-
sions open to settlement by white settlers. The
personal property of missionary establishments
was to have been divided among their neophyte
retainers thus: "Article 6. Among the said in-
dividuals will be distributed, ratably and justly,
according to the discretion of the political chief,
the half of the movable property, taking as a
basis the last inventory which the missionaries
have presented of all descriptions of cattle. Arti-
cle 7. One-half or less of the implements and
seeds indispensable for agriculture shall be al-
lotted to them."

The political government of the Indian pu-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

eblos was to be organized in accordance with
existing laws of the territory governing other
towns. The neophyte could not sell, mortgage
or dispose of the land granted him; nor could
he sell his cattle. The regulations provided that
"Religious missionaries shall be relieved from
the administration of temporalities and shall
only exercise the duties of their ministry so far
as they relate to spiritual matters." The nunner-
ies or the houses where the Indian girls were
kept under the charge of a duena until they
were of marriageable age were to be abolished
and the children restored to their parents. Rule
7 provided that "What is called the 'priest-
hood' shall immediately cease, female children
whom they have in charge being handed over
to their fathers, explaining to them the care
they should take of them, and pointing out their
obligations as parents. The same shall be done
with the male children."

Commissioners were to be appointed to take
charge of the mission property and superintend
its subdivision among the neophytes. The con-
version of ten of the missionary establishments
into pueblos was to begin in August, 1835. That
of the others was to follow as soon as possible.
San Gabriel, San Fernando and San Juan Capis-
trano were among the ten that were to be
secularized first. For years secularization had
threatened the missions, but hitherto something-
had occurred at the critical time to avert it.
The missionaries had used their influence
against it, had urged that the neophytes were
unfitted for self-support, had argued that the
emancipation of the natives from mission rule
would result in disaster to them. Through all
the agitation of the question in previous years
the padres had labored on in the preservation
and upbuilding of their establishments; but with
the issuing of the secularization decree by the
Mexican Congress, August 17, 1833, tne or-
ganization of the Hijar Colony in Mexico and
the instructions of acting president Farias to
Hijar to occupy all the property of the missions
and subdivide it among the colonists on their
arrival in California, convinced the missionaries
that the blow could no longer be averted. The
revocation of Hijar's appointment as governor
and the controversy which followed between

him and Governor Figueroa and the diputacion
for a time delayed the enforcement of the de-
cree.

In the meantime, with the energy born of de-
spair, eager at any cost to outwit those who
sought to profit by their ruin, the mission fath-
ers hastened to destroy that which through
more than half a century thousands of human
beings had spent their lives to accumulate. The
wealth of the missions lay in their herds of cat-
tle. The only marketable products of these were
the hides and tallow. Heretofore a certain num-
ber of cattle had been slaughtered each week
to feed the neophytes and sometimes when the
ranges were in danger of becoming over-
stocked cattle were killed for their hides and
tallow, and the meat left to the coyotes and the
carrion crows. The mission fathers knew that
if they allowed the possession of their herds to
pass to other hands neither they nor the
neophytes would obtain any reward for years of
labor. The blow was liable to fall at any time.
Haste was required. The mission butchers could
not slaughter the animals fast enough. Con-
tracts were made with the rancheros to kill
on shares. The work of destruction began at
the missions. The country became a mighty
shambles. The matansas were no longer used.
An animal was lassoed on the plain, thrown, its
throat cut and while yet writhing in death agony,
its hide was stripped and pegged upon the
ground to dry. There were no vessels to con-
tain the tallow and this was run into pits in the
ground to be taken out when there was more
time to spare and less cattle to be killed. The
work of destruction went on as long as there
were cattle to kill. So great was the stench
from rotting carcasses of the cattle on the plains
that a pestilence was threatened. The ayunta-
miento of Los Angeles, November 15, 1833.
passed an ordinance compelling all persons
slaughtering cattle for the hides and tallow to
cremate the carcasses. Some of the rancheros
laid the foundations of their future wealth by ap-
propriating herds of young cattle from the mis-
sion ranges.

Hugo Reid. in the letters previously referred
to in this volume, says of this period at San
Gabriel, "These facts(the decree of secularization

100

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and the distribution of the mission property)
being known to Padre Tomas (Estenaga), he,
in all probability, by order of his superior, com-
menced a work of destruction. The back build-
ings were unroofed and the timber converted
into fire wood. Cattle were killed on the halves
by people who took a lion's share. Utensils
were disposed of and goods and other articles
distributed in profusion among the neophytes.
The vineyards were ordered to be cut down,
which, however, the Indians refused to do."
After the mission was placed in charge of an
administrator, Padre Tomas remained as min-
ister of the church at a stipend of $1,500 per
annum, derived from the pious fund.

Hugo Reid says of him, "As a wrong im-
pression of his character may be produced from
the preceding remarks, in justice to his memory,
be it stated that he was a truly good man, a sin-
cere Christian and a despiser of hypocrisy. He
had a kind, unsophisticated heart, so that he be-
lieved every word told him. There has never
been a purer priest in California. Reduced in
circumstances, annoyed on many occasions by
the petulancy of administrators, he fulfilled his
duties according to his conscience, with be-
nevolence and good humor. The nuns, who,
when the secular movement came into opera-
tion, had been set free, were again gathered to-
gether under his supervision and maintained at
his expense, as were also a number of old men
and women."

The experiment of colonizing the Indians in
pueblos was a failure and they were gathered
back into the mission, or as many of them as
could be got back, and placed in charge of ad-
ministrators. "The Indians," says Reid, "were
made happy at this time in being permitted to
enjoy once more the luxury of a tule dwelling,
from which the greater part had been debarred
for so long; they could now breathe freely
again." (The close adobe buildings in which
they had been housed in mission days were no
doubt one of the causes of the great mortality
among them.)

"Administrator followed administrator until
the mission could support no more, when
the system was broken up." * * * "The
Indians during this period were continually run-

ning off. Scantily clothed and still more scant-
ily supplied with food, it was not to be wondered
at. Nearly all the Gabrielinos went north, while
those of San Diego, San Luis and San Juan
overrun this country, filling the Angeles and
surrounding ranchos with more servants than
were required. Labor, in consequence, was
very cheap. The different missions, however,
had alcaldes continually on the move, hunting
them up and carrying them back, but to no pur-
pose; it was labor in vain."

"Even under the dominion of the church in
mission days," Reid says, "the neophytes were
addicted both to drinking and gaming, with
an inclination to steal;" but after their emanci-
pation they went from bad to worse. Those at-
tached to the ranchos and those located in the
town were virtually slaves. They had bosses
or owners and when they ran away were cap-
tured and returned to their master. The account
book for 1840 of the sindico of Los Angeles
contains this item, "For the delivery of two
Indians to their boss $12."

In all the large towns there was an Indian
village known as the pueblito or little town.
These were the sink holes of crime and the
favorite resorts of dissolute characters, both
white and red. The Indian village at Los An-
geles between what is now Aliso and First street
became such an intolerable nuisance that on
petition of the citizens it was removed across
the river to the "Spring of the Abilas," but its
removal did not improve its morals. Vicente
Guerrero, the sindico, discussing the Indian
question before the ayuntamiento said, "The In-
dians are so utterly depraved that no matter
where they may settle down their conduct would
be the same, since they look upon death even
with indifference, provided they can indulge in
their pleasures and vices." This was their con-
dition in less than a decade after they were freed
from mission control.

What did six decades of mission rule accom-
plish for the Indian? In all the older missions
between their founding and their secularization
three generations of adults had come under the
influence of mission life and training — first, the
adult converts made soon after the founding;
second, their children born at the missions, and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

101

third, the children of these who had grown to
manhood before the fall of the missions. How
great an improvement had the neophytes of the
third generation made over those of the first?
They had to a great extent lost their original
language and had acquired a speaking knowl-
edge of Spanish. They had abandoned or
forgotten their primitive religious belief, but
their new religion exercised but little influence
on their lives. After their emancipation they
went from bad to worse. Some of the more
daring escaped to the mountains and joining
the wild tribes there became the leaders in
frequent predatory excursions on the horses and
cattle of the settlers in the valleys. They were
hunted down and shot like wild beasts.

What became of the mission estates? As the
cattle were killed off the different ranchos of
the mission domains, settlers petitioned the
ayuntamiento for grants. If upon investigation
it was found that the land asked for was vacant
the petition was referred to the governor for his
approval. In this way the vast mission domains
passed into private hands. The country im-
proved more in wealth and population between
1836 and 1846 than in the previous fifty years.
Secularization was destruction to the mission

and death to the Indian, but it was beneficial
to the country at large. The decline of the mis-
sions and the passing of the neophyte had be-
gun long before the decrees of secularization
were enforced. Nearly all the missions passed
their zenith in population during the second
decade of the century. Even had the mission-
ary establishments not been secularized they
would eventually have been depopulated. At no
time during the mission rule were the number
of births equal to the number of deaths. When
recruits could no longer be obtained from the
Gentiles or wild Indians the decline became
more rapid. The mission annals show that from
1769 to 1834, when secularization was enforced
— an interval of sixty-five years — 79,000 con-
verts were baptized and 62,000 deaths recorded.
The death rate among the neophytes was about
twice that of the negro in this country and
four times that of the white race. The extinc-
tion of the neophyte or mission Indian was
due to the enforcement of that inexorable law
or decree of nature, the Survival of the Fittest.
Where a stronger race comes in contact with
a weaker, there can be but one termination
of the contest — the extermination of the
weaker.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE FREE AND SOVEREIGN STATE OF ALTA CALIFORNIA.

GOVERNOR FIGUEROA on his death-
bed turned over the civil command of
the territory to Jose Castro, who there-
by became "gefe politico ad interem." The
military command was given to Lieut.-Col.
Nicolas Gutierrez with the rank of comandante
general. The separation of the two commands
was in accordance with the national law of May
6, 1822.

Castro was a member of the diputacion, but
was not senior vocal or president. Jose An-
tonio Carrillo, who held that position, was
diputado or delegate to congress and was at
that time in the city of Mexico. It was he who
secured the decree from the Mexican Congress
May 23, 1835, making Los Angeles the capital

of California, and elevating it to the rank of a
city. The second vocal, Jose Antonio Estttdillo,
was sick at his home in San Diego. Jose Cas-
tro ranked third. He was the only one of the
diputacion at the capital and at the previous
meeting of the diputacion he had acted as pre-
siding officer. Gutierrez, who was at San Ga-
briel when appointed to the military command,
hastened to Monterey, but did not reach there
until after the death of Figucroa. Castro, on
assuming command, sent a notification of his
appointment to the civil authorities of the dif-
ferent jurisdictions. All responded favorably
except San Diego and Los Angeles. San Diego
claimed the office for Estudillo, second vocal,
and Los Angeles declared against Castro be*

102

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

cause he was only third vocal and demanded that
the diputacion should meet at the legal capital
(Los Angeles) of the territory. This was the
beginning of the capital war that lasted ten years
and increased in bitterness as it increased in
age. The diputacion met at Monterey. It de-
cided in favor of Castro and against removing
the capital to Los Angeles.

Castro executed the civil functions of gefe
politico four months and then, in accordance
with orders from the supreme government, he
turned over his part of the governorship to
Comandante General Gutierrez and again the
two commands were united in one person.
Gutierrez filled the office of "gobernador in-
terno" from January 2, 1836, to the arrival of his
successor, Mariano Chico. Chico had been ap-
pointed governor by President Barragan, Decem-
ber 16, 1835, but did not arrive in California
until April, 1836. Thus California had four
governors within nine months. They changed
so rapidly there was not time to foment a rev-
olution. Chico began his administration by a
series of petty tyrannies. Just before his ar-
rival in California a vigilance committee at Los
Angeles shot to death Gervacio Alispaz and his
paramour, Maria del Rosaria Villa, for the mur-
der of the woman's husband, Domingo Feliz.
Alispaz was a countryman of Chico. Chico had
the leaders arrested and came down to Los
Angeles with the avowed purpose of executing
Prudon, Arzaga and Aranjo, the president, sec-
retary and military commander, respectively, of
the Defenders of Public Security, as the vigi-
lantes called themselves. He announced his
intention of arresting and punishing every man
who had taken part in the banishment of Gov-
ernor Victoria. He summoned Don Abel
Stearns to Monterey and threatened to have him
shot for some imaginary offense. He fulminated
a fierce pronunciamento against foreigners, that
incurred their wrath, and made himself so odious
that he was hated by all, native or foreigner.
He was a centralist and opposed to popular
rights. Exasperated beyond endurance by his
scandalous conduct and unseemly exhibitions of
temper the people of Monterey rose en masse
against him, and so terrified him that he took
passage on board a brig that was lying in the

harbor and sailed for Mexico with the threat
that he would return with an armed force to
punish the rebellious Californians, but he never
came back again.

With the enforced departure of Chico, the
civil command of the territory devolved upon
Nicolas Gutierrez, who still held the military
command. He was of Spanish birth and a cen-
tralist or anti-federalist in politics. Although a
mild mannered man he seemed to be impressed
with the idea that he must carry out the arbi-
trary measures of his predecessor. Centralism
was his nemesis. Like Chico, he was opposed
to popular rights and at one time gave orders
to disperse the diputacion by force. He was
not long in making himself unpopular by at-
tempting to enforce the centralist decrees of the
Mexican Congress.

He quarreled with Juan Bautista Alvarado,
the ablest of the native Californians. Alvarado
and Jose Castro raised the standard of revolt.
They gathered together a small army of ranch-
eros and an auxiliary force of twenty-five Amer-
ican hunters and trappers under Graham, a
backwoodsman from Tennessee. By a strategic
movement they captured the castillo or fort
which commanded the presidio, where Gutierrez
and the Mexican army officials were stationed.
The patriots demanded the surrender of the
presidio and the arms. The governor refused.
The revolutionists had been able to find but
a single cannon ball in the castillo, but this was
sufficient to do the business. A well-directed
shot tore through the roof of the governor's
house, covering him and his staff with the debris
of broken tiles; that and the desertion of most
of his soldiers to the patriots brought him to
terms. On the 5th of November, 1836, he sur-
rendered the presidio and resigned his authority
as governor. He and about seventy of his ad-
herents were sent aboard a vessel lying in the
harbor and shipped out of the country.

With the Mexican governor and his officers
out of the country, the next move of Castro and
Alvarado was to call a meeting of the diputa-
cion or territorial congress. A plan for the
independence of California was adopted. This,
which was known afterwards as the Monterey
plan, consisted of six sections, the most im-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

10:{

portant of which were as follows: "First, Alta
California hereby declares itself independent
from Mexico until the Federal System of 1824
is restored. Second, the same California is
hereby declared a free and sovereign state; es-
tablishing a congress to enact the special laws
of the country and the other necessary supreme
powers. Third, the Roman Apostolic Catholic
religion shall prevail; no other creed shall be
allowed, but the government shall not molest
anyone on account of his private opinions."
The diputacion issued a declaration of independ-
ence that arraigned the mother country, Mexico,
and her officials very much in the style that our
own Declaration gives it to King George III.
and England.

Castro issued a pronunciamiento, ending with
Viva La Federacion! Viva La Libertad! Viva
el Estado Libre y Soberano de Alta California!
Thus amid vivas and proclamations, with the
beating of drums and the booming of cannon,
El Estado Libre de Alta California (The Free
State of Alta California) was launched on the
political sea. But it was rough sailing for the
little craft. Her ship of state struck a rock and
for a time shipwreck was threatened.

For years there had been a growing jealousy
between Northern and Southern California.
Los Angeles, as has been stated before, had by a
decree of the Mexican congress been made the
capital of the territory. Monterey had per-
sistently refused to give up the governor and
the archives. In the movement to make Alta
California a free and independent state, the An-
gelehos recognized an attempt on the part of
the people of the north to deprive them of the
capital. Although as bitterly opposed to Mex-
ican governors, and as active in fomenting revo-
lutions against them as the people of Monterey,
the Angelehos chose to profess loyalty to the
mother country. They opposed the plan of
government adopted by the congress at Mon-
terey and promulgated a plan of their own, in
which they declared California was not free;
that the "Roman Catholic Apostolic religion
shall prevail in this jurisdiction, and any person
publicly professing any other shall be pros-
ecuted by law as heretofore." A mass meeting
was called to take measures "to prevent the

spreading of the Monterey revolution, so that
the progress of the nation may not be
paralyzed," and to appoint a person to take mil-
itary command of the department.

San Diego and San Luis Rey took the part
of Los Angeles in the quarrel, Sonoma and San
Jose joined Monterey, while Santa Barbara, al-
ways conservative, was undecided, but finally
issued a plan of her own. Alvarado and Castro
determined to suppress the revolutionary An-
gelehos. They collected a force of one hun-
dred men, made up of natives, with Graham's
contingent of twenty-five .American riflemen.
With this army the}- prepared to move against
the recalcitrant surehos.

The ayuntamiento of Los Angeles began
preparations to resist the invaders. An army of
two hundred and seventy men was enrolled, a
part of which was made up of neophytes. To se-
cure the sinews of war Jose Sepulveda, second al-
calde, was sent to the Mission San Fernando
to secure what money there was in the hands of
the major domo. He returned with two pack-
ages, which, when counted, were found to con-
tain $2,000.

Scouts patrolled the Santa Barbara road as
far as San Buenaventura to give warning of the
approach of the enemy, and pickets guarded the
Pass of Cahuenga and the Rodeo de Las Aguas
to prevent northern spies from entering and
southern traitors from getting out of the pueblo.
The southern army was stationed at San Fer-
nando under the command of Alferez (Lieut.)
Rocha. Alvarado and Castro, pushing down the
coast, reached Santa Barbara, where they were
kindly received and their force recruited to one
hundred and twenty men with two pieces of
artillery. Jose Sepulveda at San Fernando sent
to Los Angeles for the cannon at the town
house and $200 of the mission money to pay his
men.

On the 16th of January, 1837, Alvarado from
San Buenaventura dispatched a communication
to the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles and the
citizens, telling them vhat military resources
he had, which he would use against them if it
became necessary, but he was willing to confer
upon a plan of settlement. Sepulveda and An-
tonio M. Osio were appointed commissioners

104

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and sent to confer with the governor, armed
with several propositions, the substance of
which was that California shall not be free and
the Catholic religion must prevail with the
privilege to prosecute any other religion, "ac-
cording to law as heretofore." The commission-
ers met Alvarado on "neutral ground," between
San Fernando and San Buenaventura. A long
discussion followed without either coming to the
point. Alvarado, by a coup d'etat, brought it
to an end. In the language of the commission-
ers' report to the ayuntamiento : "While we
were a certain distance from our own forces with
only four unarmed men and were on the point of
coming to an agreement with Juan B. Alvarado,
we saw the Monterey division advancing upon
us and we were forced to deliver up the instruc-
tions of this illustrious body through fear of
being attacked." They delivered up not only
the instructions, but the Mission San Fer-
nando. The southern army was compelled to
surrender it and fall back on the pueblo, Rocha
swearing worse than "our army in Flanders"
because he was not allowed to fight. The south-
ern soldiers had a wholesome dread of Gra-
ham's riflemen. These fellows, armed with long
Kentucky rifles, shot to kill, and a battle once
begun somebody would have died for his coun-
try and it would not have been Alvarado's rifle-
men.

The day after the surrender of the mission,
January 21, 1837, the ayuntamiento held a ses-
sion and the members were as obdurate and
belligerent as ever. They resolved that it was
only in the interests of humanity that the mis-
sion had been surrendered and their army
forced to retire. "This ayuntamiento, consider-
ing the commissioners were forced to comply,
annuls all action of the commissioners and does
not recognize this territory as a free and sov-
ereign state nor Juan B. Alvarado as its gov-
ernor, and declares itself in favor of the Supreme
Government of Mexico." A few days later Al-
varado entered the city without opposition, the
Angelehian soldiers retiring to San Gabriel and
from there scattering to their homes.

On the 26th of January an extraordinary
session of the most illustrious ayuntamiento was
held. Alvarado was present and made a lengthy

speech, in which he said, "The native sons were
subjected to ridicule by the Mexican mandarins
sent here, and knowing our rights we ought to
shake off the ominous yoke of bondage." Then
he produced and read the six articles of the
Monterey plan, the council also produced a plan
and a treaty of amity was effected. Alvarado
was recognized as governor pro tern, and peace
reigned. The belligerent surehos vied with each
other in expressing their admiration for the new
order of things. Pio Pico wished to ex-
press the pleasure it gave him to see a "hijo
del pais" in office. And - Antonio Osio,
the most belligerent of the surehos, declared
"that sooner than again submit to a Mexican
dictator as governor, he would flee to the forest
and be devoured by wild beasts." The ayunta-
miento was asked to provide a building for the
government, "this being the capital of the state."
The hatchet apparently was buried. Peace
reigned in El Estado Libre. At the meeting of
the town council, on the 30th of January, Al-
varado made another speech, but it was neither
conciliatory nor complimentary. He arraigned
the "traitors who were working against the
peace of the country" and urged the members to
take measures "to liberate the city from the
hidden hands that will tangle them in their own
ruin." The pay of his troops who were ordered
here for the welfare of California is due "and
it is an honorable and preferred debt, therefore
the ayuntamiento will deliver to the government
the San Fernando money," said he. With a
wry face, very much such as a boy wears when
he is told that he has been spanked for his own
good, the alcalde turned over the balance of
the mission money to Juan Bautista, and the
governor took his departure for Monterey,
leaving, however, Col. Jose Castro with part of
his army stationed at Mission San Gabriel, os-
tensibly "to support the city's authority," but in
reality to keep a close watch on the city author-
ities.

Los Angeles was subjugated, peace reigned
and El Estado Libre de Alta California took her
place among the nations of the earth. But
peace's reign was brief. At the meeting of the
ayuntamiento May 27, 1838, Juan Bandini and
Santiago E. Arguello of San Diego, appeared

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

lur>

with a pronunciamiento and a plan, San
Diego's plan of government. Monterey, Santa
Barbara and Los Angeles had each formulated
a plan of government for the territory, and now
it was San Diego's turn. Agustin V. Zamorano,
who had been exiled with Governor Gutierrez,
had crossed the frontier and was made comand-
ante-general and territorial political chief ad
interim by the San Diego revolutionists. The
plan restored California to obedience to the
supreme government; all acts of the diputa-
cion and the Monterey plan were annulled and
the northern rebels were to be arraigned and
tried for their part in the revolution; and so on
through twenty articles.

On the plea of an Indian outbreak near San
Diego, in which the redmen, it was said, "were
to make an end of the white race," the big can-
non and a number of men were secured at Los
Angeles to assist in suppressing the Indians,
but in reality to reinforce the army of the San
Diego revolutionists. With a force of one hun-
dred and twenty-five men under Zamorano and
Portilla, "the army of the supreme government"
moved against Castro at Los Angeles. Castro
retreated to Santa Barbara and Portilla's army
took position at San Fernando.

The civil and military officials of Los i\ngeles
took the oath to support the Mexican consti-
tution of 1836 and, in their opinion, this
absolved them from all allegiance to Juan Bau-
tista and his Monterey plan. Alvarado hurried
reinforcements to Castro at Santa Barbara, and
Portilla called loudly for "men, arms and
horses," to march against the northern rebels.
But neither military chieftain advanced, and the
summer wore away without a battle. There
were rumors that Mexico was preparing to send
an army of one thousand men to subjugate the
rebellious Californians. In October came the
news that Jose Antonio Carrillo, the Machiavelli
of California politics, had persuaded President
Bustamente to appoint Carlos Carrillo, Jose's
brother, governor of Alta California.

Then consternation seized the arribehos (up-
pers) of the north and the abajehos (lowers) of
Los Angeles went wild with joy. It was not
that they loved Carlos Carrillo, for he was a
Santa Barbara man and had opposed them in

the late unpleasantness, but they saw in his ap-
pointment an opportunity to get revenge- on
Juan Bautista for the way he had humiliated
them. They sent congratulatory messages to
Carrillo and invited him to make Los Angeles
the seat of his government. Carrillo was flat-
tered by their attentions and consented. The
6th of December, 1837, was set for his inaugura-
tion, and great preparations were made for tin-
event. The big cannon was brought over from
San Gabriel to fire salutes and the city was
ordered illuminated on the nights of the 6th,
7th and 8th of December. Cards of invitation
were issued and the people from the city and
country were invited to attend the inauguration
ceremonies, "dressed as decent as possible," so
read the invitations.

The widow Josefa Alvarado's house, the fin-
est in the city, was secured for the governor's
palacio (palace). The largest hall in the city
was secured for the services and decorated as
well as it was possible. The city treasury, being
in its usual state of collapse, a subscription for
defraying the expenses was opened and horses,
hides and tallow, the current coin of the pueblo,
were liberally contributed.

On the appointed day, "the most illustrious
ayuntamiento and the citizens of the neighbor-
hood(sothe old archives read) met his excellency,
the governor, Don Carlos Carrillo, who made
his appearance with a magnificent accompani-
ment." The secretary, Xarciso Botello, "read in
a loud, clear and intelligible voice, the oath, and
the governor repeated it after him." At the
moment the oath was completed, the artillery
thundered forth a salute and the bells rang out
a merry peal. The governor made a speech,
when all adjourned to the church, where a mass
was said and a solemn Te Deum sung; after
which all repaired to the house of his excellency,
where th* southern patriots drank his health in
bumpers of wine and shouted themselves hoarse
in vivas to the new government. An inaugura-
tion ball was held — the "beauty and the chivaln
of the south were gathered there." Outside the
tallow dips flared and flickered from the porticos
of the house, bonfires blazed in the streets and
cannon boomed salvos from the old plaza. Los
Angeles was the capital at last and had a gov-

106

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ernor all to herself, for Santa Barbara refused
to recognize Carrillo, although he belonged
within its jurisdiction.

The Angelenos determined to subjugate the
Barbarehos. An army of two hundred men,
under Castenada, was sent to capture the city.
After a few futile demonstrations, Castenada's
forces fell back to San Buenaventura.

Then Alvarado determined to subjugate the
Angelenos. He and Castro, gathering together
an army of two hundred men, by forced marches
reached San Buenaventura, and by a strategic
movement captured all of Castenada's horses
and drove his army into the mission church.
F"or two days the battle raged and, "cannon to
the right of them," and "cannon in front of them
volleyed and thundered." One man was killed
on the northern side and the blood of several
mustangs watered the soil of their native land — •
died for their country. The southerners slipped
out of the church at night and fled up the val-
ley on foot. Castro's caballeros captured about
seventy prisoners. Pio Pico, with reinforce-
ments, met the remnant of Castenada's army at
the Santa Clara river, and together all fell back
to Los Angeles. Then there was wailing in the
old pueblo, where so lately there had been re-
joicing. Gov. Carlos Carrillo gathered to-
gether what men he could get to go with him
and retreated to San Diego. Alvarado's army
took possession of the southern capital and
some of the leading conspirators were sent as
prisoners to the castillo at Sonoma.

Carrillo, at San Diego, received a small re-
inforcement from Mexico, under a Captain
Tobar. Tobar was made general and given
command of the southern army. Carrillo, hav-
ing recovered from his fright, sent an order to
the northern rebels to surrender within fifteen
days under penalty of being shot as traitors if
they refused. In the meantime Los Angeles
was held by the enemy. The second alcalde
(the first, Louis Aranas, was a prisoner) called
a meeting to devise some means "to have his
excellency, Don Carlos Carrillo, return to this
capital, as his presence is very much desired by
the citizens to protect their lives and property."
A committee was appointed to locate Don
Carlos.

Instead of surrendering, Castro and Alvarado,
with a force of two hundred men, advanced
against Carrillo. The two armies met at Campo
de Las Flores. General Tobar had fortified a
cattle corral with rawhides, carretas and Cot-
tonwood poles. A few shots from Alvarado's
artillery scattered Tobar's rawhide fortifications.
Carrillo surrendered. Tobar and a few of the
leaders escaped to Mexico. Alvarado ordered
the misguided Angelehian soldiers to go home
and behave themselves. He brought the captive
governor back with him and left him with his
(Carrillo's) wife at Santa Barbara, who became
surety for the deposed ruler. Not content with
his unfortunate attempts to rule, he again
claimed the governorship on the plea that he
had been appointed by the supreme government.
But the Angelenos had had enough of him.
Disgusted with his incompetency, Juan Gallardo,
at the session of May 14, 1838, presented a pe-
tition praying that this ayuntamiento do not rec-
ognize Carlos Carrillo as governor, and setting
forth the reasons why we, the petitioners,
"should declare ourselves subject to the north-
ern governor" and why they opposed Car-
rillo.

"First. In having compromised the people
from San Buenaventura south into a declara-
tion of war, the incalculable calamities of which
will never be forgotten, not even by the most
ignorant.

"Second. Not satisfied with the unfortunate
event of San Buenaventura, he repeated the
same at Campo de Las Flores, which, only
through a divine dispensation, California is not
to-day in mourning." Seventy citizens signed
the petition, but the city attorney, who had done
time in Vallejo's castillo, decided the petition il-
legal because it was written on common paper
when paper with the proper seal could be ob-
tained.

Next day Gallardo returned with his petition
on legal paper. The ayuntamiento decided to
sound the "public alarm" and call the people to-
gether to give them "public speech." The pub-
lic alarm was sounded. The people assembled
at the city hall; speeches were made on both
sides; and when the vote was taken twenty-two
were in favor of the northern governor, five

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

107

in favor of whatever the ayuntamiento decides,
and Serbulo Vareles alone voted for Don Carlos
Carrillo. So the council decided to recognize
Don Juan Bautista Alvarado as governor and
leave the supreme government to settle the con-
test between him and Carrillo.

Notwithstanding this apparent burying of the
hatchet, there were rumors of plots and in-
trigues in Los Angeles and San Diego against
Alvarado. At length, aggravated beyond en-
durance, the governor sent word to the surehos
that if they did not behave themselves he would
shoot ten of the leading men of the south. As
he had about that number locked up in the
castillo at Sonoma, his was no idle threat. One
by one Alvarado's prisoners of state were re-
leased from Vallejo's bastile at Sonoma and re-
turned to Los Angeles, sadder if not wiser men.
At the session of the ayuntamiento October 20,
1838, the president announced that Senior
Regidor Jose Palomares had returned from
Sonoma, where he had been compelled to go
by reason of "political differences," and that he
should be allowed his seat in the council. The
request was granted unanimously.

At the next meeting Narciso Botello, its for-
mer secretary, after five and a half months' im-
prisonment at Sonoma, put in an appearance and
claimed his office and his pay. Although others
had filled the office in the interim the illustrious
ayuntamiento, "ignoring for what offense he was
incarcerated, could not suspend his salary."
But his salary was suspended. The treasury
was empty. The last horse and the last hide had
been paid out to defray the expense of the in-
auguration festivities of Carlos, the Pretender,
and the civil war that followed. Indeed there
was a treasury deficit of whole caballadas of
horses, and bales of hides. Narciso's back pay

was a preferred claim that outlasted LI Lstado
Libre.

The surehos of Los Angeles and San Diego,
finding that in Alvarado they had a man of cour-
age and determination to deal with, ceased from
troubling him and submitted to the inevitable.
At the meeting of the ayuntamiento, October 5,
1839, a notification was received, stating that the
supreme government of Mexico had appointed
Juan Bautista Alvarado governor of the depart-
ment. There was no grumbling or dissent. On
the contrary, the records say, "This illustrious
body acknowledges receipt of the communica-
tion and congratulated his excellency. It will
announce the same to the citizens to-morrow
(Sunday), will raise the national colors, salute
the same with the recpiired number of volleys,
and will invite the people to illuminate their
houses for a better display in rejoicing at such
a happy appointment." W ith his appointment
by the supreme government the "free and sov-
ereign state of Alta California" became a dream
of the past — a dead nation. Indeed, months be-
fore Alvarado had abandoned his idea of found-
ing an independent state and had taken the oath
of allegiance to the constitution of 1836. The
loyal surehos received no thanks from the su-
preme government for all their professions of
loyalty, whilst the rebellious arribcnos of the
north obtained all the rewards — the governor,
the capital and the offices. The supreme gov-
ernment gave the deposed governor, Carlos
Carrillo, a grant of the island of Santa Rosa,
in the Santa Barbara Channel, but whether it
was given him as a salve to his wounded dignity
or as an Elba or St. Helena, where, in the event
of his stirring up another revolution, he might
be banished a la Napoleon, the records do not
inform us.

108

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XIV.

DECLINE AND FALL OF MEXICAN DOMINATION.

WHILE the revolution begun by Al-
varado and Castro had not established
California's independence, it had effect-
ually rid the territory of Mexican dictators.
A native son was governor of the depart-
ment of the Californians (by the constitu-
tion of 1836 Upper and Lower California had
been united into a department); another native
son was comandante of its military forces. The
membership of the departmental junta, which
had taken the place of the diputacion, was
largely made up of sons of the soil, and natives
filled the minor offices. In their zeal to rid
themselves of Mexican office-holders they had
invoked the assistance of another element that
was ultimately to be their undoing.

During the revolutionary era just passed the
foreign population had largely increased. Not
only had the foreigners come by sea, but they
had come by land. Capt. Jedediah S. Smith, a
New England-born trapper and hunter, was the
first man to enter California by the overland
route. A number of trappers and hunters came
in the early '30s from New Mexico by way of
the old Spanish trail. This immigration was
largely American, and was made up of a bold,
adventurous class of men, some of them not
the most desirable immigrants. Of this latter
class were some of Graham's followers.

By invoking Graham's aid to put him in
power, Alvarado had fastened upon his shoul-
ders an old Man of the Sea. It was easy enough
to enlist the services of Graham's riflemen, but
altogether another matter to get rid of them.
Now that he was firmly established in power,
Alvarado would, no doubt, have been glad to be
rid entirely of his recent allies, but Graham and
his adherents were not backward in giving him
to understand that he owed his position to them,
and they were, inclined to put themselves on an
equality with him. This did not comport with
his ideas of the dignity of his office. To be

hailed by some rough buckskin-clad trapper
with "Ho! Bautista; come here, I want to speak
with you," was an affront to his pride that the
governor of the two Californias could not
quietly pass over, and, besides, like all of his
countrymen, he disliked foreigners.

There were rumors of another revolution, and
it was not difficult to persuade Alvarado that
the foreigners were plottingto revolutionize Cal-
ifornia. Mexico had recently lost Texas, and
the same class of "malditos extranjeros" (wicked
strangers) were invading California, and would
ultimately possess themselves of the country. Ac-
cordingly, secret orders were sent throughout
the department to arrest and imprison all for-
eigners. Over one hundred men of different
nationalities were arrested, principally Amer-
icans and English. Of these forty-seven were
shipped to San Bias, and from there marched
overland to Tepic, where they were imprisoned
for several months. Through the efforts of the
British consul, Barron, they were released.
Castro, who had accompanied the prisoners to
Mexico to prefer charges against them, was
placed under arrest and afterwards tried by
court-martial, but was acquitted. He had been
acting under orders from his superiors. After
an absence of over a year twenty of the exiles
landed at Monterey on their return from Mex-
ico. Robinson, who saw them land, says:
"They returned neatly dressed, armed with rifles
and swords, and looking in much better condi-
tion than when they were sent away, or probably
than they had ever looked in their lives before."
The Mexican government had been compelled
to pay them damages for their arrest and im-
prisonment and to return them to California.
Graham, the reputed leader of the foreigners,
was the owner of a distillery near Santa Cruz,
and had gathered a number of hard characters
around him. It would have been no loss had he
never returned.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

toy

The only other event of importance during
Alvaraclo's term as governor was the capture of
Monterey by Commodore Ap Catesby Jones, of
the United States navy. This event happened
after Alvarado's successor, Micheltorena, had
landed in California, but before the government
had been formally turned over to him.

The following extract from the diary of a
pioneer, who was an eye-witness of the affair,
gives a good description of the capture:

"Monterey, Oct. 19, 1842. — At 2 p. m. the
United States man-of-war United States, Com-
modore Ap Catesby Jones, came to anchor close
alongside and in-shore of all the ships in port.
About 3 p. m. Capt. Armstrong came ashore,
accompanied by an interpreter, and went direct
to the governor's house, where he had a private
conversation with him, which proved to be a
demand for the surrender of the entire coast of
California, upper and lower, to the United
States government. When he was about to go
on board he gave three or four copies of a
proclamation to the inhabitants of the two Cali-
fornias, assuring them of the protection of their
lives, persons and property. In his notice to the
governor (Alvarado) he gave him only until the
following morning at 9 a. m. to decide. If he
received no answer, then he would fire upon the
town."

"I remained on shore that night and went
down to the governor's with Mr. Larkin and
Mr. Eagle. The governor had had some idea
of running away and leaving Monterey to its
fate, but was told by Mr. Spence that he should
not go, and finally he resolved to await the re-
sult. At 12 at night some persons were sent
on board the United States who had been ap-
pointed by the governor to meet the commodore
and arrange the terms of the surrender. Next
morning at half-past ten o'clock about one hun-
dred sailors and fifty marines disembarked. The
sailors marched up from the shore and took pos-
session of the fort. The American colors were
hoisted. The United States fired a salute of thir-
teen guns; it was returned by the fort, which fired
twenty-six guns. The marines in the meantime
had marched up to the government house. The
officers and soldiers of the California govern-
ment were discharged and their guns and other

arms taken possession of and carried to the fort.
The stars and stripes now wave over us. Long
may they wave here in California!"

"Oct. 21, 4 p. m. — Elags were again changed,
the vessels were released, and all was quiet again.
The commodore had received later news bv
some Mexican newspapers."

Commodore Jones had been stationed at Cal-
lao with a squadron of four vessels. An English
fleet was also there, and a Erench fleet was
cruising in the Pacific. P>oth these were sup-
posed to have designs on California. Jones
learned that the English admiral had received
orders to sail next day. Surmising that his des-
tination might be California, he slipped out of
the harbor the night before and crowded all sail
to reach California before the English admiral.
The loss of Texas, and the constant influx of im-
migrants and adventurers from the United
States into California, had embittered the Mex-
ican government more and more against
foreigners. Manuel Micheltorena, who had
served under Santa Anna in the Texas war,
was appointed January 19, 1842, comandante-
general inspector and gobernador propietario of
the Californias.

Santa Anna was president of the Mexican re-
public. His experience with Americans in
Texas during the Texan war of independence,
in 1836-37, had decided him to use every
effort to prevent California from sharing the fate
of Texas.

Micheltorena, the new-ly-appointed governor,
was instructed to take with him sufficient force
to check the ingress of Americans. He recruited
a force of three hundred and fifty men, prin-
cipally convicts enlisted from the prisons of
Mexico. His army of thieves and ragamuffins
landed at San Diego in August, 1842.

Robinson, who was at San Diego when one
of the vessels conveying Michcltorena's cholos
(convicts) landed, thus describes them: "Five
days afterward the brig Chato arrived with
ninety soldiers and their families. I saw them
land, and to me they presented a state of
wretchedness and misery unequaled. Not one
individual among them possessed a jacket or
pantaloons, but, naked, and like the savage In-
dians, they concealed their nudity with dirty,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

miserable blankets. The females were not much
better off, for the scantiness of their mean ap-
parel was too apparent for modest observers.
They appeared like convicts, and, indeed, the
greater portion of them had been charged with
crime, either of murder or theft."

Micheltorena drilled his Falstaffian army at
San Diego for several weeks and then began his
march northward; Los Angeles made great
preparations to receive the new governor. Seven
years had passed since she had been decreed the
capital of the territory, and in all these years
she had been denied her rights by Monterey.
A favorable impression on the new governor
might induce him to make the ciudad his capital.
The national fiesta of September 16 was post-
poned until the arrival of the governor. The
best house in the town was secured for him
and his staff. A grand ball was projected
and the city illuminated the night of his arrival.
A camp was established down by the river and
the cholos, who in the meantime had been given
white linen uniforms, were put through the drill
and the manual of arms. They were incorrigible
thieves, and stole for the very pleasure of steal-
ing. They robbed the hen roosts, the orchards,
the vineyards and the vegetable gardens of the
citizens. To the Angelehos the glory of their
city as the capital of the territory faded in the
presence of their empty chicken coops and
plundered orchards. They longed to speed the
departure of their now unwelcome guests. After
a stay of a month in the city Micheltorena and
his army took up their line of march northward.
He reached a point about twenty miles north
of San Fernando, when, on the night of the
24th of October, a messenger aroused him from
his slumbers with the news that the capital had
been captured by the Americans. Micheltorena
seized the occasion to make political capital for
himself with the home government. He spent
the remainder of the night in fulminating proc-
lamations against the invaders fiercer than the
thunderbolts of Jove, copies of which were dis-
patched post haste to Mexico. He even wished
himself a thunderbolt "that he might fly over
intervening space and annihilate the invaders."
Then, with his own courage and doubtless that
of his brave cholos aroused to the highest

pitch, instead of rushing on the invaders, he and
his army fled back to San Fernando, where,
afraid to advance or retreat, he halted until news
reached him that Commodore Jones had re-
stored Monterey to the Californians. Then his
valor reached the boiling point. He boldly
marched to Los Angeles, established his head-
quarters in the city and awaited the coming
of Commodore Jones and his officers from Mon-
terey.

On the 19th of January, 1843, Commodore
Jones and his staff came to Los Angeles to meet
the governor. At the famous conference in
the Palacio de Don Abel, Micheltorena pre-
sented his articles of convention. Among other
ridiculous demands were the following: "Ar-
ticle VI. Thomas Ap C. Jones will deliver fif-
teen hundred complete infantry uniforms to re-
place those of nearly one-half of the Mexican
force, which have been ruined in the violent
march and the continued rains while they were
on their way to recover the port thus invaded."
"Article VII. Jones to pay $15,000 into the
national treasury for expenses incurred from the
general alarm; also a complete set of musical
instruments in place of those ruined on this
occasion."* Judging from Robinson's descrip-
tion of the dress of Micheltorena's cholos it is
doubtful whether there was an entire uniform
among them.

"The commodore's first impulse," writes a
member of his staff, "was to return the papers
without comment and to refuse further com-
munication with a man who could have the ef-
frontery to trump up such charges as those for
which indemnification was claimed." The com-
modore on reflection put aside his personal feel-
ings, and met the governor at the grand ball in
Sanchez hall, held in honor of the occasion.
The ball was a brilliant affair, "the dancing
ceased only with the rising of the sun next
morning." The commodore returned the articles
without his signature. The governor did not
again refer to his demands. Next morning,
January 21, 1843, Jones and his officers took
their departure from the city "amidst the beat-
ing of drums, the firing of cannon and the ring-

*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. IV.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Ill

ing of bells, saluted by the general and his wife
from the door of their quarters. On the 31st
of December, Micheltorena had taken the oath
of office in Sanchez' hall, which stood on the
east side of the plaza. Salutes were fired, the
bells were rung and the city was illuminated
for three evenings. For the second time a gov-
ernor had been inaugurated in Los Angeles.

Micheltorena and his cholo army remained in
Los Angeles about eight months. The An-
gelenos had all the capital they cared for. They
were perfectly willing to have the governor and
his army take up their residence in Monterey.
The cholos had devoured the country like an
army of chapules (locusts) and were willing to
move on. Monterey would no doubt have gladly
transferred what right she had to the capital
if at the same time she could have transferred
to her old rival, Los Angeles, Micheltorena's
cholos. Their pilfering was largely enforced
by their necessities. They received little or no
pay, and they often had to steal or starve. The
leading native Californians still entertained their
old dislike to "Mexican dictators" and the ret-
inue of three hundred chicken thieves accom-
panying the last dictator intensified their hatred.

Micheltorena, while not a model governor,
had many good qualities and was generally liked
by the better class of foreign residents. He
made an earnest effort to establish a system of
public education in the territory. Schools were
established in all the principal towns, and ter-
ritorial aid from the public funds to the amount
of $500 each was given them. The school at
Los Angeles had over one hundred pupils in
attendance. His worst fault was a disposition
to meddle in local affairs. He was unreliable
and not careful to keep his agreements. He
might have succeeded in giving California a
stable government had it not been for the antip-
athy to his soldiers and the old feud between
the "hijos del pais" and the Mexican dictators.

These proved his undoing. The native sons
under Alvarado and Castro rose in rebellion.
In November, 1844, a revolution was inaugu-
rated at Santa Clara. The governor marched
with an army of one hundred and fifty men
against the rebel forces, numbering about two
hundred. They met at a place called the La-

guna de Alvires. A treaty was signed in which
Micheltorena agreed to ship his cholos back to
Mexico.

This treaty the governor deliberately broke.
He then intrigued with Capt. John A. Sutter of
New Helvetia and Isaac Graham to obtain as-
sistance to crush the rebels. January 9, 1845,
Micheltorena and Sutter formed a junction of
their forces at Salinas — their united commands
numbering about five hundred men. They
marched against the rebels to crush them. But
the rebels did not wait to be crushed. Alvarado
and Castro, with about ninety men, started for
Los Angeles, and those left behind scattered
to their homes. Alvarado and his men reached
Los Angeles on the night of January 20, 1845.
The garrison stationed at the curate's house
was surprised and captured. One man was
killed and several wounded. Lieutenant Me-
dina, of Micheltorena's army, was the com-
mander of the pueblo troops. Alvarado's army
encamped on the plaza and he and Castro set
to work to revolutionize the old pueblo. The
leading Angelenos had no great love for Juan
Bautista, and did not readily fall into his
schemes. They had not forgotten their en-
forced detention in Yallejo's bastile during the
Civil war. An extraordinary session of the
ayuntamiento was called January 21. Alvarad'-
and Castro were present and made eloquent ap-
peals. The records say: "The ayuntamiento
listened, and after a short interval of silence ami
meditation decided to notify the senior member
of the department assembly of Don Alvarado
and Castros' wishes."

They were more successful with the Pico
brothers. Pio Pico was senior vocal, and in
case Micheltorena was disposed he, by virtue of
his office, would become governor. Through
the influence of the Picos the revolution gained
ground. The most potent influence in spread-
ing the revolt was the fear of Micheltorena's
army of chicken thieves. Should the town be
captured by them it certainly would be looted.
The department assembly was called together.
A peace commission was sent to meet Michel-
torena, who was leisurely marching southward,
and intercede with him to give up his propose I
invasion of the south. He refused. Then the

112

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

assembly pronounced him a traitor, deposed
him by vote and appointed Pio Pico governor.
Recruiting went on rapidly. Hundreds of sad-
dle horses were contributed, "old rusty guns
were repaired, hacked swords sharpened, rude
lances manufactured" and cartridges made for
the cannon. Some fifty foreigners of the south
joined Alvarado's army; not that they had
much interest in the revolution, but to protect
their property against the rapacious invaders —
the cholos — and Sutter's Indians,* who were as
much dreaded as the cholos. On the 19th of
February, Micheltorena reached the Encinos,
and the Angelenian army marched out through
Cahuenga Pass to meet him. On the 20th the
two armies met on the southern edge of the
San Fernando valley, about fifteen miles from
Los Angeles. Each army numbered about four
hundred men. Micheltorena had three pieces
of artillery and Castro two. They opened on
each other at long range and seem to have
fought the battle throughout at very long range.
A mustang or a mule (authorities differ) was
killed.

Wilson, Workman and McKinley of Castro's
army decided to induce the Americans on the
other side, many of whom were their personal
friends, to abandon Micheltorena. Passing up
a ravine, they succeeded in attracting the atten-
tion of some of them by means of a white flag.
Gantt, Hensley and Bidwell joined them in the
ravine. The situation was discussed and the
Americans of Micheltorena's army agreed to
desert him if Pico would protect them in their
land grants. Wilson, in his account of the bat-
tle, says:f "I knew, and so did Pico, that these
land questions were the point with those young
Americans. Before I started on my journey or
embassy, Pico was sent for; on his arrival
among us I, in a few words, explained to him
what the party had advanced. 'Gentlemen,' said
he, 'are any of you citizens of Mexico?' They
answered 'No.' 'Then your title deeds given
you by Micheltorena are not worth the paper

*Suttcr liac! under his command a company of In-
dians. He had drilled these in the use of firearms.
' he employing of these savajjes by Micheltorena was
bitterly resented by the Californians.

tPuh Historical Society of Southern California,
Vol. 111.

they are written on, and he knew it well when
he gave them to you; but if you wiil abandon
his cause I will give you my word of honor as
a gentleman, and Don Benito Wilson and Don
Juan Workman to carry out what I promise,
that I will protect each one of you in the land
that you now hold, and when you become citi-
zens of Mexico I will issue you the proper ti-
tles.' They said that was all they asked, and
promised not to fire a gun against us. They also
asked not to be required to fight on our side,
which was agreed to.

"Micheltorena discovered (how, I do not know)
that his Americans had abandoned him. About
an hour afterwards he raised his camp and
flanked us by going further into the valley to-
wards San Fernando, then marching as though
he intended to come around the bend of the
river to the city. The Californians and we for-
eigners at once broke up our camp and came
back through the Cahuenga Pass, marched
through the gap into the Feliz ranch, on the
Los Angeles River, till we came into close
proximity to Micheltorena's camp. It was now
night, as it was dark when we broke up our
camp. Here we waited for daylight, and some
of our men commenced maneuvering for a fight
with the enemy. A few cannon shots were
fired, when a white flag was discovered flying
from Micheltorena's front. The whole matter
then went into the hands of negotiators ap-
pointed by both parties and the terms of sur-
render were agreed upon, one of which was that
Micheltorena and his obnoxious officers and
men were to march back up the river to the
Cahuenga Pass, then down on the plain to the
west of Los Angeles, the most direct line to
San Pedro, and embark at that point on a vessel
then anchored there to carry them back to Mex-
ico." Sutter was taken prisoner, and his Indians,
after being corralled for a time, were sent back
to the Sacramento.

The roar of the battle of Cahuenga, or the
Alamo, as it is sometimes called, could be dis-
tinctly heard in Los Angeles, and the people
remaining in the city were greatly alarmed.
William Heath Davis, in his Sixty Years in Cal-
ifornia, thus describes the alarm in the town;
"Directly to the north of the town was a high

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

"hill" (now known as Mt. Lookout). "As soon
as firing was heard all the people remaining in
the town, men, women and children, ran to the
top of this hill. As the wind was blowing from
the north, the firing was distinctly heard, five
leagues away, on the battle-field throughout the
day. All business places in town were closed.
The scene on the hill was a remarkable one,
women and children, with crosses in their hands,
kneeling and praying to the saints for the safety
of their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, lovers,
cousins, that they might not be killed in the bat-
tle; indifferent to their personal appearance,
tears streaming from their eyes, and their hair
blown about by the wind, which had increased
to quite a breeze. Don Abel Stearns, myself and
others tried to calm and pacify them, assuring
them that there was probably no danger; some-
what against our convictions, it is true, judg-
ing from what we heard of the firing and from
our knowledge of Micheltorena's disciplined
force, his battery, and the riflemen he had with
him. During the day the scene on the hill con-
tinued. The night that followed was a gloomy
one, caused by the lamentations of the women
and children."

Davis, who was supercargo on the Don
Quixote, the vessel on which Micheltorena and
his soldiers were shipped to Mexico, claims that
the general "had ordered his command not to
injure the Californians in the force opposed to
him, but to fire over their heads, as he had no
desire to kill them."

Another Mexican-born governor had been
deposed and deported, gone to join his fellows,
Victoria, Chico and Gutierrez. In accordance
with the treaty of Cahuenga and by virtue of
his rank as senior member of the departmental
assembly, Pio Pico became governor. The hijos
del pais were once more in the ascendency.
Jose Castro was made comandante-general. Al-
varado was given charge of the custom house at
Monterey, and Jose Antonio Carrillo was ap-
pointed commander of the military district of
the south. Los Angeles was made the capital,
although the archives and the treasury remained
in Monterey. The revolution apparently had
been a success. In the proceedings of the Los
Angeles ayuntamiento, March I, 1845, appears

this record: "The agreements entered into at
Cahuenga between Gen. Emanuel Michel-
torena and Lieut.-Col. Jose Castro were then
read, and as they contain a happy termination ol
affairs in favor of the government, this Illustri-
ous Body listened with satisfaction and so an-
swered the communication."

The people joined with the ayuntamiento in
expressing their "satisfaction" that a "happy
termination" had been reached of the political
disturbances which had distracted the country.
But the end was not yet. Pico did his best to
conciliate the conflicting elements, but the old
sectional jealousies that had divided the people
of the territory would crop out. Jose Antonio
Carrillo, the Machiavel of the south, hated Cas-
tro and Alvarado and was jealous of Pico's good
fortune. He was the superior of any of them
in ability, but made himself unpopular by his
intrigues and his sarcastic speech. W hen Cas-
tro and Alvarado came south to raise the stand-
ard of revolt they tried to win him over. He
did assist them. He was willing enough to plot
against Micheltorena, but after the overthrow
of the Mexican he was equally ready to plot
against Pico and Castro. In the summer of
1845 he was implicated in a plot to depose Pico,
who, by the way, was his brother-in-law. Pico
piaced him and two of his fellow conspirators,
Serbulo and Hilario Yarela, under arrest. Car-
rillo and Hilario Yarela were shipped to Mazat-
lan to be tried for their misdeed. Serbulo Ya-
rela made his escape from prison. The two
exiles returned early in 1846 unpunished and
ready for new plots.

Pico was appointed gobernador proprietario,
or constitutional governor of California. Sep-
tember 3, 1845, by President Herrcra. The su-
preme government of Mexico never seemed to
take offense or harbor resentment against the
Californians for deposing and sending home a
governor. As the officials of the supreme gov-
ernment usually obtained office by revolution,
they no doubt had a fellow feeling for the revolt-
ing Californians. When Micheltorena returned
to Mexico he was coldly received and a com-
missioner was sent to Pico with dispatches vir-
tually approving all that had been done.

Castro, too, gave Pico a great deal of uneasi-

114

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ness. He ignored the governor and managed
the military affairs of the territory to suit him-
self. His headquarters were at Monterey and
doubtless he had the sympathy if not the en-
couragement of the people of the north in his
course. But the cause of the greatest uneasi-
ness was the increasing immigration from the
United States. A stream of emigrants from the
western states, increasing each year, poured
down the Sierra Nevadas and spread over the
rich valleys of California. The Californians rec-
ognized that through the advent of these ''for-
eign adventurers,"as they called them, the "man-
ifest destiny"of California was to be absorbed by
the United States. Alvarado had appealed to
Mexico for men and arms and had been an-
swered by the arrival of Micheltorena and his
cholos. Pico appealed and for a time the Cali-
fornians were cheered by the prospect of aid.

In the summer of 1845 a force of six hundred
veteran soldiers, under command of Colonel
Iniestra, reached Acapulco, where ships were ly-
ing to take them to California, but a revolution
broke out in Mexico and the troops destined for
the defense of California were used to overthrow
President Herrera and to seat Paredes. Cali-
fornia was left to work out her own destiny
unaided or drift with the tide — and she drifted.

In the early months of 1846 there was a rapid
succession of important events in her history,
each in passing bearing her near and nearer to
a manifest destiny — the downfall of Mexican
domination in California. These will be pre-
sented fully in the chapter on the Acquisition of
California by the United States. But before
taking up these we will turn aside to review life
in California in the olden time under Spanish
and Mexican rule.

CHAPTER XV.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT— HOMES AND HOME-LIFE OF

THE CALIFORNIANS.

UNDER Spain the government of Califor-
nia was semi-military and semi-clerical.
The governors were military officers and
had command of the troops in the territory, and
looked after affairs at the pueblos; the friars
were supreme at the missions. The municipal
government of the pueblos was vested in ayun-
tamientos. The decree of the Spanish Cortes
passed May 23, 1812, regulated the membership
of the ayuntamiento according to the popula-
tion of the town — "there shall be one alcalde
(mayor), two regidores (councilmen), and one
procurador-syndico (treasurer) in all towns
which do not have more than two hundred in-
habitants; one alcalde, four regidores and one
syndico in those the population of which ex-
ceeds two hundred, but does not exceed five
hundred." When the population of a town ex-
ceeded one thousand it was allowed two al-
caldes, eight regidores and two syndicos. Over
the members of the ayuntamiento in the early
years of Spanish rule was a quasi-military offi-

cer called a comisionado, a sort of petty dictator
or military despot, who, when occasion required
or inclination moved him, embodied within him-
self all three departments of government, judi-
ciary, legislative and executive. After Mexico
became a republic the office of comisionado was
abolished. The alcalde acted as president of
the ayuntamiento, as mayor and as judge of
the court of first instance. The second alcalde
took his place when that officer was ill or ab-
sent. The syndico was a general utility man.
He acted as city or town attorney, tax collector
and treasurer. The secretary was an important
officer; he kept the records, acted as clerk of
the alcalde's court and was the only municipal
officer who received pay, except the syndico,
who received a commission on his collections.

In 1837 the Mexican Congress passed a decree
abolishing ayuntamientos in capitals of depart-
ments having a population of less than four
thousand and in interior towns of less than
eight thousand. In 1839 Governor Alvarado

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

LIB

reported to the Departmental Assembly that no
town in California had the requisite population.
The ayuntamientos all closed January i, 1840.
They were re-established in 1844. During their
abolition the towns were governed by prefects
and justices of the peace, and the special laws
or ordinances were enacted by the departmental
assembly.

The jurisdiction of the ayuntamiento often
extended over a large area of country beyond
the town limits. That of Los Angeles, after the
secularization of the missions, extended over a
country as large as the state of Massachusetts.
The authority of the ayuntamiento was as ex-
tensive as its jurisdiction. It granted town lots
and recommended to the governor grants of
land from the public domain. In addition to
passing ordinances its members sometimes
acted as executive officers to enforce them. It
exercised the powers of a board of health, a
board of education, a police commission and a
street department. During the civil war be-
tween Northern and Southern California, in
1837-38, the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles
raised and equipped an army and assumed the
right to govern the southern half of the terri-
tory.

The ayuntamiento was spoken of as Muy
Ilustre (Most Illustrious), in the same sense
that we speak of the honorable city council, but
it was a much more dignified body than a city
council. The members were required to attend
their public functions "attired in black apparel,
so as to add solemnity to the meetings." They
served without pay, but if a member was absent
from a meeting without a good excuse he was
liable to a fine. As there was no pay in the office
and its duties were numerous and onerous, there
was not a large crop of aspirants for council-
men in those days, and the office usually sought
the man. It might be added that when it caught
the right man it was loath to let go of him.

The misfortunes that beset Francisco Pantoja
aptly illustrate the difficulty of resigning in the
days when office sought the man, not man the
office. Pantoja was elected fourth regidor of
the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles in 1837. In
those days wild horses were very numerous.
When the pasture in the foothills was exhausted

they came down into the valleys and ate up
the feed needed for the cattle. On this account,
and because most of these wild horses were
worthless, the rancheros slaughtered them. A
corral was built with wings extending out on
the right and left from the main entrance. W hen
the corral was completed a day was set for a
wild horse drive. The bands were rounded up
and driven into the corral. The pick of the
caballados were lassoed and taken out to be
broken to the saddle and the refuse of the drive
killed. The Vejars had obtained permission
from the ayuntamiento to build a corral between
the Cerritos and the Salinas for the purpose of
corralling wild horses. Pantoja, being some-
thing of a sport, petitioned his fellow regidores
for a twenty days' leave of absence to join in
the wild horse chase. A wild horse chase was
wild sport and dangerous, too. Somebody was
sure to get hurt, and Pantoja in this one was
one of the unfortunates. When his twenty days'
leave of absence was up he did not return to
his duties of regidor, but instead sent his res-
ignation on plea of illness. His resignation was
not accepted and the president of the ayunta-
miento appointed a committee to investigate
his physical condition. There were no physi-
cians in Los Angeles in those days, so the com-
mittee took along Santiago McKinley, a canny
Scotch merchant, who was reputed to have some
knowledge of surgery. The committee and the
improvised surgeon held an ante-mortem in-
quest on what remained of Pantoja. The com-
mittee reported to the council that he was a
physical wreck; that he could not mount a
horse nor ride one when mounted. A native
Californian who had reached such a state of
physical dilapidation that he could not mount
a horse might well be excused from official du-
ties. To excuse him might establish a danger-
ous precedent. The ayuntamiento heard the
report, pondered over it and then sent it and
the resignation to the governor. The governor
took them under advisement. In the meantime
a revolution broke out and before peace was re-
stored and the governor had time to pass upon
the case Pantoja's term had expired by limita-
tion.

That modern fad of reform legislation, the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

referendum, was in full force and effect in Cali-
fornia three-quarters of a century ago. When
some question of great importance to the com-
munity was before the ayuntamiento and the
regidores were divided in opinion, the alarma
publica or public alarm was sounded by the
beating of the long roll on the drum and all the
citizens were summoned to the hall of sessions.
Any one hearing the alarm and not heed-
ing it was fined $3. When the citizens were con-
vened the president of the ayuntamiento, speak-
ing in a loud voice, stated the question and the
people were given "public speech." The ques-
tion was debated by all who wished to speak.
When all had had their say it was decided by a
show of hands.

The ayuntamientos regulated the social func-
tions of the pueblos as well as the civic. Ordi-
nance 5, ayuntamiento proceedings of Los
Angeles, reads: "All individuals serenading pro-
miscuously around the street of the city at night
without first having obtained permission from
the alcalde will be fined $1.50 for the first of-
fense, $3 for the second offense, and for the
third punished according to law." Ordinance 4,
adopted by the ayuntamiento of Los Angeles,
January 28, 1838, reads: "Every person not
having any apparent occupation in this city or
its jurisdiction is hereby ordered to look for
work within three days, counting from the day
this ordinance is published; if not complied
with, he will be fined $2 for the first offense, $4
for the second offense, and will be given com-
pulsory work for the third." From the reading
of the ordinance it would seem if the tramp
kept looking for work, but was careful not to
find it, there could be no offense and conse-
quently no fines or compulsory work.

Some of the enactments of the old regidores
would fade the azure out of the blue laws of
Connecticut in severity. In the plan of gov-
ernment adopted by the surenos in the rebellion
of 1837 appears this article: 'Article 3, The
Roman Catholic Apostolic religion shall pre-
vail throughout this jurisdiction; and any per-
son professing publicly any other religion shall
be prosecuted."

1 1 cro is a blue law of Monterey, enacted
March 23, 1816: "All persons must attend mass

and respond in a loud voice, and if any persons
should fail to do so without good cause they
will be put in the stocks for three hours."

The architecture of the Spanish and Mexican
eras of California was homely almost to ugliness.
There was no external ornamentation to the
dwellings and no internal conveniences. There
was but little attempt at variety and the houses
were mostly of one style, square walled, tile cov-
ered, or flat roofed with pitch, and usually but
one story high. Some of the mission churches
were massive, grand and ornamental, while
others were devoid of beauty and travesties on
the rules of architecture. Every man was his
own architect and master builder. He had no
choice of material, or, rather, with his ease-
loving disposition, he chose to use that which
was most convenient, and that was adobe clay,
made into sun-dried brick. The Indian was the
brickmaker, and he toiled for his taskmasters,
like die Hebrew of old for the Egyptian, making
bricks without straw and without pay. There
were no labor strikes in the building trades then.
The Indian was the builder, and he did not
know how to strike for higher wages, because
he received no wages, high or low. The adobe
bricks were moulded into form and set up to
dry. Through the long summer days they
baked in the hot sun, first on one side, then on
the other; and when dried through they were
laid in the wall with mud mortar. Then the
walls had to dry and dry perhaps through an-
other summer before the house was habitable.
Time was the essense of building contracts then.

There was but little wood used in house con-
struction then. It was only the aristocrats who
could indulge in the luxury of wooden floors.
Most of the houses had floors of the beaten
earth. Such floors were cheap and durable.
Gilroy says, when he came to Monterey in 1814,
only the governor's house had a wooden floor.
A door of rawhide shut out intruders and
wooden-barred windows admitted sunshine and
air.

The legendry of the hearthstone and the fire-
side which fills so large a place in the home life
and literature of the Anglo-Saxon had no part
in the domestic system of the old-time Califor-
nian. He had no hearthstone and no fireside,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

117

nor could that pleasing fiction of Santa Claus
coming down the chimney with toys on Christ-
mas eve that so delights the children of to-day
have been understood by the youthful Califor-
nian of long ago. There were no chimneys in
California. The only means of warming the
houses by artificial heat was a pan (or brasero)
of coals set on the floor. The people lived out
of doors in the open air and invigorating sun-
shine; and they were healthy and long-lived.
Their houses were places to sleep in or shelters
from rain.

The furniture was meager and mostly home-
made. A few benches ,or rawhide-bottomed
chairs to sit on; a rough table; a chest or two
to keep the family finery in; a few cheap prints
of saints on the walls — these formed the furnish-
ings and the decorations of the living rooms of
the common people. The bed was the pride and
the ambition of the housewife. Even in humble
dwellings, sometimes, a snowy counterpane and
lace-trimmed pillows decorated a couch whose
base was a dried bullock's hide stretched on a
rough frame of wood. A shrine dedicated to the
patron saint of the household was a very essen-
tial part of a well-regulated home.

Fashions in dress did not change with the sea-
sons. A man could wear his grandfather's hat
and his coat, too, and not be out of the fashion.
Robinson, writing of California in 1829, says:
"The people were still adhering to the costumes
of the past century." It was not until after 1834,
when the Hijar colonists brought the latest fash-
ions from the City of Mexico, that the style of
dress for men and women began to change. The
next change took place after the American con-
quest. Only two changes in half a century, a
garment had to be very durable to become un-
fashionable.

The few wealthy people in the territory
dressed well, even extravagantly. Robinson de-
scribes the dress of Tomas Yorba, a wealthy
ranchero of the Upper Santa Ana, as he saw
him in 1829: "Upon his head he wore a black
silk handkerchief, the four corners of which
hung down his neck behind. An embroidered
shirt; a cravat of white jaconet, tastefully tied;
a blue damask vest; short clothes of crimson
velvet; a bright green cloth jacket, with large

silver buttons, and shoes of embroidered deer-
skin composed his dress. 1 was afterwards in-
formed by Don Manuel (Dominguezj that on
some occasions, such as some particular [east
day or festival, his entire display often exceeded
in value a thousand dollars."

"The dress worn by the middle class of fe-
males is a chemise, with short embroidered
sleeves, richly trimmed with lace; a muslin pet-
ticoat, flounced with scarlet and secured at the
waist by a silk band of the same color; shoes of
velvet or blue satin; a cotton reboso or scarf;
pearl necklace and earrings; with hair falling in
broad plaits down the back."* After 1834 the
men generally adopted calzoneras instead of the
knee breeches or short clothes of the last cen-
tury.

"The calzoneras were pantaloons with the ex-
terior seam open throughout its length. On the
upper edge was a strip of cloth, red, blue or
black, in which were buttonholes. On the other
edge were eyelet holes for buttons. In some
cases the calzonera was sewn from hip to the
middle of the thigh ; in others, buttoned. From
the middle of the thigh downward the leg was
covered by the bota or leggins, used by every
one, whatever his dress." The short jacket,
with silver or bronze buttons, and the silken
sash that served as a connecting link between
the calzoneras and the jacket, and also supplied
the place of what the Californians did not wear,
suspenders, this constituted a picturesque cos-
tume, that continued in vogue until the con-
quest, and with many of the natives for year-
after. "After 1834 the fashionable women of Cal-
ifornia exchanged their narrow for more flowing
garments and abandoned the braided hair for
the coil and the large combs till then in use for
smaller combs. "f

For outer wraps the serapa for men and the
rebosa for women were universally worn. The
texture of these marked the social standing of
the wearer. It ranged from cheap cotton and
coarse serge to the costliest silk and the finest
French broadcloth. The costume of the neo-
phyte changed but once in centuries, and that

♦Robinson, Life in California.
tBancroft's Pastoral California.

118

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

was when he divested himself of his coat of
mud and smear of paint and put on the mission
shirt and breech clout. Shoes he did not wear
and in time his feet became as hard as the hoofs
of an animal. The dress of the mission women
consisted of a chemise and a skirt; the dress of
the children was a shirt and sometimes even this
was dispensed.

Filial obedience and respect for parental au-
thority were early impressed upon the minds of
the children. The commandment, "Honor thy
father and mother," was observed with an ori-
ental devotion. A child was never too old or too
large to be exempt from punishment. Stephen
C. Foster used to relate an amusing story of a
case of parental disciplining he once saw at Los
Angeles. An old lady, a grandmother, was be-
laboring, with a barrel stave, her son, a man
thirty years of age. The son had done some-
thing of which the mother did not approve. She
sent for him to come over to the maternal home
to receive his punishment. He came. She took
him out to the metaphorical woodshed, which,
in this case, was the portico of her house, where
she stood him up and proceeded to administer
corporal punishment. With the resounding
thwacks of the stave, she would exclaim, "I'll
teach you to behave yourself." "I'll mend your
manners, sir." "Now you'll be good, won't
you?" The big man took his punishment with-
out a thought of resisting or rebelling. In fact,
he seemed to enjoy it. It brought back feel-
ingly and forcibly a memory of his boyhood
days.

In the earlier years of the republic, before
revolutionary ideas had perverted the usages of
the Californians, great respect was shown to
those in authority, and the authorities were
strict in requiring deference from their constit-
uents. In the Los Angeles archives of 1828 are
the records of an impeachment trial of Don
Antonio Maria Lugo, held to depose him from
the office of judge of the plains. The principal
duty of such a judge was to decide cases of dis-
puted ownership of horses and cattle. Lugo
seems to have had an exalted idea of the dignity
of his office. Among the complaints presented
at the trial was one from young Pedro Sanchez,
in which he testified that Lugo had tried to ride

his horse over him in the street because he,
Sanchez, would not take off his hat to the juez
del campo and remain standing uncovered while
the judge rode past. Another complainant at the
same trial related how at a rodeo Lugo ad-
judged a neighbor's boy guilty of contempt of
court because the boy gave him an impertinent
answer, and then he proceeded to give the boy
an unmerciful whipping. So heinous was the
offense in the estimation of the judge that the
complainant said, "had not Lugo fallen over a
chair he would have been beating the boy yet."

Under Mexican domination in California
there was no tax levied on land and improve-
ments. The municipal funds of the pueblos were
obtained from revenue on wine and brandy;
from the licenses of saloons and other business
houses; from the tariff on imports; from per-
mits to give balls or dances; from the fines of
transgressors, and from the tax on bull rings
and cock pits. Then men's pleasures and vices
paid the cost of governing. In the early '40s
the city of Los Angeles claimed a population of
two thousand, yet the municipal revenues rarely
exceeded $1,000 a year. With this small amount
the authorities ran a city government and kept
out of debt. It did not cost much to run a city
government then. There was no army of high-
salaried officials with a horde of political heelers
quartered on the municipality and fed from the
public crib at the expense of the taxpayer. Poli-
ticians may have been no more honest then
than now, but where there was nothing to steal
there was no stealing. The alcaldes and regi-
dores put no temptation in the way of the poli-
ticians, and thus they kept them reasonably
honest, or at least they kept them from plunder-
ing the taxpayers by the simple expedient of
having no taxpayers.

The functions of the various departments of
the municipal governments were economically
administered. Street cleaning and lighting were
performed at individual expense instead of pub-
lic. There was an ordinance in force in Los
Angeles and Santa Barbara and probably in
other municipalities that required each owner of
a house every Saturday to sweep and clean in
front of his premises to the middle of the street.
His neighbor on the opposite side met him half

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

118

way, and the street was swept without expense
to the pueblo. There was another ordinance
that required each owner of a house of more
that two rooms on a main street to hang a
lighted lantern in front of his door from twilight
to eight o'clock in winter and to nine in sum-
mer. There were fines for neglect of these duties.

There was no fire department in the pueblos.
The adobe houses with their clay walls, earthen
floors, tiled roofs and rawhide doors were as
nearly fireproof as any human habitation could
kp. wade. The cooking was done in detached

kitchens and in beehive-shaped ovens without
flues. The houses were without chimneys, so
the danger from fire was reduced to a minimum.
A general conflagration was something un-
known in the old pueblo days of California.

There was no paid police department. Every
able-bodied young man was subject to military
duty. A volunteer guard or patrol was kept on
duty at the cuartels or guard houses. The
guards policed the pueblos, but they were not
paid. Each young man had to take His turn at
guard duty.

CHAPTER XVI.

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION BY CONQUEST.

THE Mexican war marked the beginning
by the United States of territorial ex-
pansion by conquest. "It was," says
General Grant, "an instance of a republic fol-
lowing the bad example of European mon-
archies in not considering justice in their desire
to acquire additional territory." The "additional
territory" was needed for the creation of slave
states. The southern politicians of the extreme
pro-slavery school saw in the rapid settlement
of the northwestern states the downfall of their
domination and the doom of their beloved insti-
tution, slavery. Their peculiar institution could
not expand northward and on the south it had
reached the Mexican boundary. The only way
of acquiring new territory for the extension of
slavery on the south was to take it by force from
the weak Republic of Mexico. The annexation
of Texas brought with it a disputed boundary
line. The claim to a strip of country between
the Rio Nueces and the Rio Grande furnished a
convenient pretext to force Mexico to hostili-
ties. Texas as an independent state had never
exercised jurisdiction over the disputed terri-
tory. As a state of the Union after annexation
she could not rightfully lay claim to what she
never possessed, but the army of occupation
took possession of it as United States property,
and the war was on. In the end we acquired a
large slice of Mexican territory, but the irony

of fate decreed that not an acre of its soil should
be tilled by slave labor.

The causes that led to the acquisition of Cali-
fornia antedated the annexation of Texas and
the invasion of Mexico. After the adoption of
liberal colonization laws by the Mexican gov-
ernment in 1824, there set in a steady drift
of Americans to California. At first they came
by sea, but after the opening of the overland
route in 1841 they came in great numbers by-
land. It was a settled conviction in the minds
of these adventurous nomads that the manifest
destiny of California was to become a part of the
United States, and they were only too willing to
aid destiny when an opportunity offered. The
opportunity came and it found them ready for it.

Capt. John C. Fremont, an engineer and ex-
plorer in the services of the L'nited States, ap-
peared at Monterey in January, 1846, and ap-
plied to General Castro, the military comandante.
for permission to buy supplies for his party of
sixty-two men who were encamped in the San
Joaquin valley, in what is now Kern county.
Permission was given him. There seems to
have been a tacit agreement between Castro and
Fremont that the exploring party should not
enter the settlements, but early in March the
whole force was encamped in the Salinas val-
ley. Castro regarded the marching of a body
of armed men through the country as an act of

120

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

hostility, and ordered them out of the country.
Instead of leaving, Fremont intrenched himself
on an eminence known as Gabilian Peak (about
thirty miles from Monterey), raised the stars
and stripes over his barricade, and defied Castro.
Castro maneuvered his troops on the plain
below, but did not attack Fremont. After two
days' waiting Fremont abandoned his position
and began his march northward. On May 9,
when near the Oregon line, he was overtaken
by Lieutenant Gillespie, of the United States
navy, with a dispatch from the president. Gil-
lespie had left the United States in November,
1845, and» disguised, had crossed Mexico from
Vera Cruz to Mazatlan, and from there had
reached Monterey. The exact nature of the
dispatches to Fremont is not known, but pre-
sumably they related to the impending war be-
tween Mexico and the United States, and the
necessity for a prompt seizure of the country
to prevent it from falling into the hands of Eng-
land. Fremont returned to the Sacramento,
where he encamped.

On the 14th of June, 1846, a body of Amer-
ican settlers from the Napa and Sacramento
valleys, thirty-three in number, of which Ide,
Semple, Grigsby and Merritt seem to have been
the leaders, after a night's march, took posses-
sion of the old castillo or fort at Sonoma, with
its rusty muskets and unused cannon, and made
Gen. M. G. Vallejo, Lieut.-Col. Prudon, Capt.
Salvador Vallejo and Jacob P. Leese, a brother-
in-law of the Vallejos, prisoners. There seems
to have been no privates at the castillo, all offi-
cers. Exactly what was the object of the Amer-
ican settlers in taking General Vallejo prisoner
is not evident. General Vallejo was one of the
few eminent Californians who favored the an-
nexation of California to the United States. He
is said to have made a speech favoring such a
movement in the junta at Monterey a few
months before. Castro regarded him with sus-
picion. The prisoners were sent under an
armed escort to Fremont's camp. William B.
Ide was elected captain of the revolutionists
who remained at Sonoma, to "hold the fort."
He issued a pronunciamiento in which he de-
clared California a free and independent gov-
ernment, under the name of the California Re-

public. A nation must have a flag of its own,
so one was improvised. It was made of a piece
of cotton cloth, or manta, a yard wide and five
feet long. Strips of red flannel torn from the
shirt of one of the men were stitched on the
bottom of the flag for stripes. With a blacking
brush, or, as another authority says, the end
of a chewed stick for a brush, and red paint,
William L. Todd painted the figure of a grizzly
bear passant on the field of the flag. The na-
tives called Todd's bear "cochino," a pig; it
resembled that animal more than a bear. A
five-pointed star in the left upper corner,
painted with the same coloring matter, and the
words "California republic" printed on it in ink,
completed the famous bear flag.

The California republic was ushered into ex-
istence June 14, 1846, attained the acme of its
power July 4, when Ide and his fellow patriots
burnt a quantity of powder in salutes, and fired
off oratorical-pyrotechnics in honor of the new
republic. It utterly collapsed on the 9th of July,
after an existence of twenty-five days, when
news reached Sonoma that Commodore Sloat
had raised the stars and stripes at Monterey and
taken possession of California in the name ol
the United States. Lieutenant Revere arrived
at Sonoma on the 9th and he it was who low-
ered the bear flag from the Mexican flagstaff,
where it had floated through the brief existence
of the California republic, and raised in its place
the banner of the United States.

Commodore Sloat, who had anchored in
Monterey Bay July 2, 1846, was for a time un-
decided whether to take possession of the coun-
try. He had no official information that war
had been declared between the United States
and Mexico; but, acting on the supposition
that Captain Fremont had received definite in-
structions, on the 7th of July he raised the flag
and took possession of the custom-house and
government buildings at Monterey. Captain
Montgomery, on the 9th, raised it at San Fran-
cisco, and on the same day the bear flag gave
place to the stars and stripes at Sonoma.

General Castro was holding Santa Clara and
San Jose when he received Commodore Sloat's
proclamation informing him that the commo-
dore had taken possession of Monterey.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tro, after reading the proclamation, which was
written in Spanish, formed his men in line, and
addressing them, said: "Monterey is taken by
the Americans. What can I do with a handful
of men against the United States? 1 am going
to Mexico. All of you who wish to follow me,
About face!' All that wish to remain can go to
their homes."* A very small part of his force
followed him.

Commodore Sloat was superseded by Com-
modore Stockton, who set about organizing an
expedition to subjugate the southern part of the
territory which remained loyal to Mexico. Fre-
mont's exploring party, recruited to a battalion
of one hundred and twenty men, had marched
to Monterey, and from there was sent by vessel
to San Diego to procure horses and prepare to
act as cavalry.

While these stirring events were transpiring
in the north, what was the condition in the
south where the capital, Los Angeles, and the
bulk of the population of the territory were
located? Pio Pico had entered upon the duties
of the governorship with a desire to bring peace
and harmony to the distracted country. He ap-
pointed Juan Bandini, one of the ablest states-
men of the south, his secretary. After Bandini
resigned he chose J. M. Covarrubias, and later
Jose M. Moreno filled the office.

The principal offices of the territory had been
divided equally between the politicians of the
north and the south. While Los Angeles be-
came the capital, and the departmental assembly
met there, the military headquarters, the ar-
chives and the treasury remained at Monterey.
But, notwithstanding this division of the spoils
of office, the old feud between the arribenos
and the abajenos would not down, and soon the
old-time quarrel was on with all its bitterness.
Castro, as military comandante, ignored the
governor, and Alvarado was regarded by the
surehos as an emissary of Castro's. The de-
partmental assembly met at Los Angeles, in
March, 1846. Pico presided, and in his opening
message set forth the unfortunate condition of
affairs in the department. Education was neg-
lected; justice was not administered; the mis-

*Hall's History of San Jose.

sions were so burdened by debt that but leu
of them could be rented; the army was disor-
ganized and the treasury empty.

Not even the danger of war with the Amer-
icans could make the warring factions forget
their fratricidal strife. Castro's proclamation
against Fremont was construed by the suren Of
into a scheme to inveigle the governor to the
north so that the comandante-general could de-
pose him and seize the office for himself. Cas-
tro's preparations to resist by force the en-
croachments of the Americans were believed
by Pico and the Angelenians to be fitting out
of an army to attack Los Angeles and over-
throw the government.

On the loth of June, Pico left Los Angeles
for Monterey with a military force of a hundred
men. The object of the expedition was to op-
pose, and, if possible, to depose Castro. He-
left the capital under the care of the ayunta-
miento. On the 20th of June, .v.calde Gallardo
reported to the ayuntamiento that he had posi-
tive information "that Don Castro had left
Monterey and would arrive here in three days
with a military force for the purpose of captur-
ing this city." (Castro had left Monterey with
a force of seventy men, but he hail gone north
to San Jose.) The sub-prefect, Don Abel
Stearns, was authorized to enlist troops to pre-
serve order. On the 23d of June three compa-
nies were organized, an artillery company under
Miguel Pryor, a company of riflemen under
Benito Wilson, and a cavalry eompany under
Gorge Palomares. Pico, with his army at San
Luis Obispo, was preparing to march against
Monterey, when the news reached him of the
capture of Sonoma by the Americans, and next
day, July 12th, the news reached Los Angeles
just as the council had decided on a plan of
defense against Castro, who was five hundred
miles away. Pico, on the impulse of the mo-
ment, issued a proclamation, in which In-
arraigned the United States for perfidy and
treachery, and the gang of "North American
adventurers," who captured Sonoma "with the
blackest treason the spirit of evil can invent."
His arraignment of the "North American na-
tion" was so severe that some of his American
friends in Los Angeles took umbrage at his

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

pronunciamento. He afterwards tried to recall
it, but it was too late; it had been published.

Castro, finding the "foreign adventurers" too
numerous and too aggressive in the northern
part of the territory, determined, with what men
he could induce to go with him, to retreat to
the south; but before so doing he sent a medi-
ator to Pico to negotiate a treaty of peace and
amity between the factions. On the 12th of
July the two armies met at Santa Margarita,
near San Luis Obispo. Castro brought the
news that Commodore Sloat had hoisted the
United States flag at Monterey and taken pos-
session of the country for his government. The
meeting of the governor and the comandante-
general was not very cordial, but in the presence
of the impending danger to the territory they
concealed their mutual dislike and decided to
do their best to defend the country they both
loved.

Sorrowfully they began their retreat to the
capital; but even threatened disaster to their
common country could not wholly unite the
north and the south. The respective armies,
Castro's numbering about one hundred and fifty
men, and Pico's one hundred and twenty, kept
about a day's march apart. They reached Los
Angeles, and preparations were begun to resist
the invasion of the Americans. Pico issued a
proclamation ordering all able-bodied men be-
tween fifteen and sixty years of age, native and
naturalized, to take up arms to defend the coun-
try; any able-bodied Mexican refusing was to
be treated as a traitor. There was no enthusi-
asm for the cause. The old factional jealousy
and distrust was as potent as ever. The militia
of the south would obey none but their own
officers; Castro's troops, who considered them-
selves regulars, ridiculed the raw recruits of
the surenos, while the naturalized foreigners of
American extraction secretly sympathized with
their own people.

Pico, to counteract the malign influence of his
Santa Barbara proclamation and enlist the sym-
pathy and more ready adhesion of the foreign
element of Los Angeles, issued the following
circular: (This circular or proclamation has
never before found its way into print. I find
no allusion to it in Bancroft's or Hittell's His-

tories. A copy, probably the only one in exist-
ence, was donated some years since to the
Historical Society of Southern California.)

seal of J , |l

Gobierno del Dep.
de Calif ornias.

"Circular. — As owing to the unfortunate
condition of things that now prevails in this
department in consequence of the war into
which the United States has provoked the Mex-
ican nation, some ill feeling might spring up
between the citizens of the two countries, out of
which unfortunate occurrences might grow, and
as this government desires to remove every
cause of friction, it has seen fit, in the use of its
power, to issue the present circular.

"The Government of the department of Cali-
fornia declares in the most solemn manner that
all the citizens of the United States that have
come lawfully into its territory, relying upon
the honest administration of the laws and the
observance of the prevailing treaties, shall not
be molested in the least, and their lives and
property shall remain in perfect safety under the
protection of the Mexican laws and authorities
legally constituted.

"Therefore, in the name of the supreme gov-
ernment of the nation, and by virtue of the
authority vested upon me, I enjoin upon all the
inhabitants of California to observe towards the
citizens of the United States that have lawfully
come among us, the kindest and most cordial
conduct, and to abstain from all acts of violence
against their persons or property; provided they
remain neutral, as heretofore, and take no part
in the invasion effected by the armies of their
nation.

"The authorities of the various municipalities
and corporations will be held strictly responsi-
ble for the faithful fulfillment of this order, and
shall, as soon as possible, take the necessary
measures to bring it to the knowledge of the
people. God and Liberty.

"Pio Pico.

"Jose Matias Mareno, Secretary pro tern."
Angeles, July 27, 1846.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

When we consider the conditions existing in
California at the time this circular was issued,
its sentiments reflect great credit on Pico for
his humanity and forbearance. A little over a
month before, a party of Americans seized
General Vallejo and several other prominent
Californians in their homes and incarcerated
them in prison at Sutter's Fort. Nor was this
outrage mitigated when the stars and stripes
were raised. The perpetrators of the outrage
were not punished. These native Californians
were kept in prison nearly two months without
any charge against them. Besides, Governor
Pico and the leading Californians very well
knew that the Americans whose lives and prop-
erty this proclamation was designed to protect
would not remain neutral when their country-
men invaded the territory. Pio Pico deserved
better treatment from the Americans than he
received. He was robbed of his landed posses-
sions by unscrupulous land sharks, and his char-
acter defamed by irresponsible historical scrib-
blers.

Pico made strenuous efforts to raise men and
means to resist the threatened invasion. He had
mortgaged the government house to de Celis
for $2,000, the mortgage to be paid "as soon as
order shall be established in the department."
This loan was really negotiated to fit out the
expedition against Castro, but a part of it was
expended after his return to Los Angeles in
procuring supplies while preparing to meet the
American army. The government had but little
credit. The moneyed men of the pueblo were
averse to putting money into what was almost
sure to prove a lost cause. The bickerings and
jealousies between the factions neutralized to a
considerable degree the efforts of Pico and Cas-
tro to mobilize the army.

Castro established his camp on the mesa east
of the river. Here he and Andres Pico under-
took to drill the somewhat incongruous collec-
tion of hombres in military maneuvering. Their
entire force at no time exceeded three hundred
men. These were poorly armed and lacking in
discipline.

We left Stockton at Monterey preparing an
expedition against Castro at Los Angeles. On
taking command of the Pacific squadron, July

29, he issued a proclamation. It was as bom-
bastic as the pronunciamiento of a Mexican
governor. Bancroft says: "The paper ua>
made up of falsehood, of irrelevent issues and
bombastic ranting in about equal parts, the
tone being offensive and impolitic even in those
inconsiderable portions which were true and
legitimate." His only object in taking posses-
sion of the country was "to save from destruc-
tion the lives and property of the foreign resi-
dents and citizens of the territory who had in-
voked his protection." In view of Pico's humane
circular and the uniform kind treatment that the
Californians accorded the American residents,
there was very little need of Stockton's interfer-
ence on that score. Commodore Sloat did not
approve of Stockton's proclamation or of his
policy.

On the 6th of August, Stockton reached San
Pedro and landed three hundred and sixty
sailors and marines. These were drilled in mili-
tary movements on land and prepared for the
march to Los Angeles.

Castro sent two commissioners, Pablo de La
Guerra and Jose M. Flores, to Stockton, asking
for a conference and a cessation of hostilities
while negotiations were pending. They asked
that the United States forces remain at San
Pedro while the terms of the treaty were under
discussion. These requests Commodore Stock-
ton peremptorily refused, and the commissioners
returned to Los Angeles without stating the
terms on which they proposed to treat.

In several so-called histories, I find a very
dramatic account of this interview. On the ar-
rival of the commissioners they were marched
up to the mouth of an immense mortar,
shrouded in skins save its huge aperture. Their
terror and discomfiture were plainly discernible.
Stockton received them with a stern and forbid-
ding countenance, harshly demanding their mis-
sion, which they disclosed in great confusion.
They bore a letter from Castro proposing a
truce, each party to hold its own possessions
until a general pacification should be had. This
proposal Stockton rejected with contempt, and
dismissed the commissioners with the assurance
that only an immediate disbandment of his
forces and an unconditional surrender would

124

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

shield Castro from the vengeance of an incensed
foe. The messengers remounted their horses
in dismay and fled back to Castro." The mortar
story, it is needless to say, is pure fabrication,
yet it runs through a number of so-called his-
tories of California. Castro, on the 9th of Au-
gust, held a council of war with his officers at
the Campo en La Mesa. He announced his in-
tention of leaving the country for the purpose of
reporting to the supreme government, and of
returning at some future day to punish the
usurpers. He wrote to Pico: "I can count only
one hundred men, badly armed, worse supplied
and discontented by reason of the miseries they
suffer; so that I have reason to fear that not
even these men will fight when the necessity
arises." And this is the force that some imag-
inative historians estimate at eight hundred to
one thousand men.

Pico and Castro left Los Angeles on the
night of August 10, for Mexico; Castro going
by the Colorado River route to Sonora, and
Pico, after being concealed for a time by his
brother-in-law, Juan Froster, at the Santa Mar-
garita and narrowly escaping capture by Fre-
mont's men, finally reached Lower California
and later on crossed the Gulf to Sonora.

Stockton began his march on Los Angeles
August II. He took with him a battery of four
guns. The guns were mounted on carretas, and
each gun drawn by four oxen. He had with
him a good brass band.

Major Fremont, who had been sent to San
Diego with his battalion of one hundred and
seventy men, had, after considerable skirmish-
ing among the ranchos, secured enough horses
to move, and on the 8th of August had begun
his march to join Stockton. He took with him
one hundred and twenty men, leaving about
fifty to garrison San Diego.

Stockton consumed three days on the march.
Fremont's troops joined him just south of the
city, and at 4 p. m. of the 13th the combined
force, numbering nearly five hundred men, en-
tered the town without opposition, "our entry,"
says Major Fremont, "having more the effect
of a parade of home guards than of an enemy
taking possession of a conquered town." Stock-
ton reported finding at Castro's abandoned camp

ten pieces of artillery, four of them spiked. Fre-
mont says he (Castro) "had buried part of his
guns." Castro's troops that he had brought
down with him took their departure for their
northern homes soon after their general left,
breaking up into small squads as they advanced.
The southern troops that Pico had recruited dis-
persed to their homes before the arrival of the
Americans. Squads of Fremont's battalion were
sent out to scour the country and bring in any of
the Californian officers or leading men whom
they could find. These, when found, were
paroled.

Another of those historical myths, like the
mortar story previously mentioned, which is
palmed off on credulous readers as genuine his-
tory, runs as follows: "Stockton, while en route
from San Pedro to Los Angeles, was informed
by a courier from Castro 'that if he marched
upon the town he would find it the grave of him-
self and men.' 'Then,' answered the commodore,
'tell the general to have the bells ready to toll
at eight o'clock, as I shall be there by that
time.' " As Castro left Los Angeles the day
before Stockton began his march from San
Pedro, and when the commodore entered the
city the Mexican general was probably two
hundred miles away, the bell tolling myth goes
to join its kindred myths in the category of his-
tory as it should not be written.

On the 17th of August, Stockton issued a sec-
ond proclamation, in which he signs himself
commander-in-chief and governor of the terri-
tory of California. It was milder in tone and
more dignified than the first. He informed the
people that their country now belonged to the
United States. For the present it would be
governed by martial law. They were invited
to elect their local officers if those now in office
refused to serve.

Four days after the capture of Los Angeles,
The Warren, Captain Hull, commander, an-
chored at San Pedro. She brought official no-
tice of the declaration of war between the
United States and Mexico. Then for the first
time Stockton learned that there had been an
official declaration of war between the two
countries. United States officers had waged
war and had taken possession of California upon

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the strength of a rumor that hostilities existed
between the countries.

The conquest, if conquest it can be called, was
accomplished without the loss of a life, if we
except the two Americans, Fowler and Cowie,
of the Bear Flag party, who were brutally mur-
dered by a band of Californians under Padillo,
and the equally brutal shooting of Beryessa and
the two de Haro boys by the Americans at San
Rafael. These three men were shot as spies,
but there was no proof that they were such, and
they were not tried. These murders occurred
before Commodore Sloat raised the stars and
stripes at Monterey.

On the 15th of August, 1846, just thirty-seven
days after the raising of the stars and stripes
at Monterey, the first newspaper ever published
in California made its appearance. It was pub-
lished at Monterey by Semple and Colton and
named The Calif omian. Rev. Walter Colton
was a chaplain in the United States navy and
came to California on the Congress with Com-
modore Stockton. He was made alcalde of
Monterey and built, by the labor of the chain

gang and from contributions and fines, the
first schoolhouse in California, named for him
Colton Hall. Colton thus describes the other
member of the firm, Dr. Robert Semple: "Mv
partner is an emigrant from Kentucky, who
stands six feet eight in his stockings. He is in
a buckskin dress, a foxskin cap; is true with his
rifle, ready with his pen and quick at the t\ in-
case." Semple came to California in 1845, w'tn
the Hastings party, and was one of the leaders
in the Bear Flag revolution. The type and
press used were brought to California by A u-
gustin V. Zamorano in 1834, and by him sold
to the territorial government, and had been
used for printing bandos and pronunciamentos.
The only paper the publishers of The Calif 'omian
could procure was that used in the manufacture
of cigarettes, which came in sheets a little
larger than foolscap. The font of type was
short of w's, so two v's were substituted for
that letter, and when these ran out two u's were
used. The paper was moved to San Francisco
in 1848 and later on consolidated with the Cali-
fornia Star.

CHAPTER XVII.

REVOLT OF THE CALIFORNIANS.

HOSTILITIES had ceased in all parts of
the territory. The leaders of the Cali-
fornians had escaped to Mexico, and
Stockton, regarding the conquest as completed,
set about organizing a government for the con-
quered territory. Fremont was to be appointed
military governor. Detachments from his bat-
talion were to be detailed to garrison different
towns, while Stockton, with what recruits he
could gather in California, and his sailors and
marines, was to undertake a naval expedition
against the west coast of Mexico, land his forces
at Mazatlan or Acapulco and march overland
to "shake hands with General Taylor at the
gates of Mexico." Captain Gillespie was made
military commandant of the southern depart-
ment, with headquarters at Los Angeles, and as-
signed a garrison of fifty men. Commodore
Stockton left Los Angeles for the north Sep-

tember 2. Fremont, with the remainder of his
battalion, took up his line of march for Monte-
rey a few days later. Gillespie's orders were to
place the city under martial law, but not to en-
force the more burdensome restrictions upon
quiet and well-disposed citizens. A conciliatory
policy in accordance with instructions of the
secretary of the navy was to be adopted and the
people were to be encouraged to "neutrality,
self-government and friendship."

Nearly all historians who have written upon
this subject lay the blame for the subsequent
uprising of the Californians and their revolt
against the rule of the military commandant.
Gillespie, to his petty tyrannies. Col. J. J.
Warner, in his Historical Sketch of Los An
geles County, says: "Gillespie attempted by a
coercive system to effect a moral and social
change in the habits, diversions and pastimes of

126

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the people and to reduce them to his standard
of propriety." Warner was not an impartial
judge. He had a grievance against Gillespie
which embittered him against the captain. Gil-
lespie may have been lacking in tact, and his
schooling in the navy under the tyrannical
regime of the quarterdeck of sixty years ago
was not the best training to fit him for govern-
ment, but it is hardly probable that in two
weeks' time he undertook to enforce a "coercive
system" looking toward an entire change in the
moral and social habits of the people. Los An-
geles under Mexican domination was a hotbed
of revolutions. It had a turbulent and restless
element among its inhabitants that was never
happier than when fomenting strife and con-
spiring to overthrow those in power. Of this
class Colton, writing in 1846, says: "They drift
about like Arabs. If the tide of fortune turns
against them they disband and scatter to the
four winds. They never become martyrs to any
cause. They are too numerous to be brought
to punishment by any of their governors, and
thus escape justice." There was a conservative
class in the territory, made up principally of
the large landed proprietors, both native and
foreign-born, but these exerted small influence
in controlling the turbulent. While Los An-
geles had a monopoly of this turbulent and rev-
olutionary element, other settlements in the
territory furnished their full quota of that class
of political knight errants whose chief pastime
was revolution, and whose capital consisted of
a gaily caparisoned steed, a riata, a lance, a
dagger and possibly a pair of horse pistols.
These were the fellows whose "habits, diver-
sions and pastimes" Gillespie undertook to re-
duce "to his standard of propriety."

That Commodore Stockton should have left
Gillespie so small a garrison to hold the city
and surrounding country in subjection shows
that either he was ignorant of the character of
the people, or that he placed too great reliance
in the completeness of their subjection. With
Castro's men in the city or dispersed among the
neighboring ranchos, many of them still retain-
ing their arms, and all of them ready to rally
at a moment's notice to the call of their leaders;
with no reinforcements nearer than five hundred

miles to come to the aid of Gillespie in case of
an uprising, it was foolhardiness in Stockton to
entrust the holding of the most important place
in California to a mere handful of men, half
disciplined and poorly equipped, without forti-
fications for defense or supplies to hold out in
case of a siege.

Scarcely had Stockton and Fremont, with
their men, left the city before trouble began.
The turbulent element of the city fomented
strife and seized every occasion to annoy and
harass the military commandant and his men.
While his "petty tyrannies," so called, which
were probably nothing more than the enforce-
ment of martial law, may have been somewhat
provocative, the real cause was more deep
seated. The Californians, without provocation
on their part and without really knowing the
cause why, found their country invaded, their
property taken from them and their government
in the hands of an alien race, foreign to them
in customs and religion. They would have been
a tame and spiritless people indeed, had they
neglected the opportunity that Stockton's blun-
dering gave them to regain their liberties. They
did not waste much time. Within two weeks
from the time Stockton sailed from San Pedro
hostilities had begun and the city was in a state
of siege.

Gillespie, writing in the Sacramento States-
man in 1858, thus describes the first attack:
"On the 226. of September, at three o'clock in
the morning, a party of sixty-five Californians
and Sonorenos made an attack upon my small
command quartered in the government house.
We were not wholly surprised, and with twenty-
one rifles we beat them back without loss to our-
selves, killing and wounding three of their num-
ber. When daylight came, Lieutenant Hensley,
with a few men, took several prisoners and
drove the Californians from the town. This
party was merely the nucleus of a revolution
commenced and known to Colonel Fremont be-
fore he left Los Angeles. In twenty-four hours,
six hundred well-mounted horsemen, armed
with escopetas (shotguns), lances and one fine
brass piece of light artillery, surrounded Los
Angeles and summoned me to surrender. There
were three old honey-combed iron guns (spiked)

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

L2I

in the corral of my quarters, which we at once
cleared and mounted upon the axles of carts."

Serbulo Varela, a young man of some ability,
but of a turbulent and reckless character, had
been the leader at first, but as the uprising as-
sumed the character of a revolution, Castro's old
officers came to the front. Capt. Jose Maria
Flores was chosen comandante-general; Jose
Antonio Carrillo, major-general; and Andres
Pico, comandante de escuadron. The main
camp of the insurgents was located on the mesa,
east of the river, at a place called Paredon
Blanco (White Bluff).

On the 24th of September, from the camp
at White Bluff, was issued the famous Pronun-
ciamiento de Barelas y otros Californias contra
Los Americanos (The Proclamation of Barelas
and other Californians against the Americans).
It was signed by Serbulo Varela (spelled Bare-
las), Leonardo Cota and over three hundred
others. Although this proclamation is gener-
ally credited to Flores, there is no evidence to
show that he had anything to do with framing
it. He promulgated it over his signature Octo-
ber I. It is probable that it was written by
Varela and Cota. It has been the custom of
American writers to sneer at this production as
florid and bombastic. In fiery invective and
fierce denunciation it is the equal of Patrick
Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me
death!" Its recital of wrongs is brief, but to
the point. "And shall we be capable of permit-
ting ourselves to be subjugated and to accept in
silence the heavy chains of slavery? Shall we
lose the soil inherited from our fathers, which
cost them so much blood? Shall we leave our
families victims of the most barbarous servi-
tude? Shall we wait to see our wives outraged,
smr innocent children beaten by American
whips, our property sacked, our temples pro-
faned, to drag out a life full of shame and dis-
grace? No! a thousand times no! Compatriots,
death rather than that! Who of you does not
feel his heart beat and his blood boil on con-
templating our situation? Who will be the
Mexican that will not be indignant and rise in
arms to destroy our oppressors? We believe
there will be not one so vile and cowardly!"

Gillespie had left the government house (lo-

cated on what is now the site of the St. Charles
Hotel) and taken a position on Fort Hill, where
he had erected a temporary barricade of sacks
filled with earth and had mounted his cannon
there. The Americans had been summoned to
surrender, but had refused. They were besieged
by the Californians. There was but little firing
between the combatants, an occasional sortie
and a volley of rifle balls by the American*
when the Californians approached too near.
The Californians were well mounted, but poorly
armed, their weapons being principally muskets,
shotguns, pistols, lances and riatas; while the
Americans were armed with long-range rifles,
of which the Californians had a wholesome
dread. The fear of these arms and his cannon
doubtless saved Gillespie and his men from
capture.

On the 24th Gillespie dispatched a messenger
to find Stockton at Monterey, or at San Fran-
cisco if he had left Monterey, and apprise him
of the perilous situation of the Americans at
Los Angeles. Gillespie's dispatch bearer, John
Brown, better known by his California nick-
name, Juan Flaco or Lean John, made one of
the most wonderful rides in history. Gillespie
furnished Juan Flaco with a package of cigar-
etees, the paper of each bearing the inscription,
"Believe the bearer;" these were stampd with
Gillespie's seal. Brown started from Los Angeles
at 8 p. m., September 24, and claimed to have
reached Yerba Buena at 8 p. m. of the 28th.
a ride of six hundred and thirty miles in four
days. This is incorrect. Colton, who was al-
calde of Monterey at that time, notes Brown's
arrival at that place on the evening of the 29th.
Colton, in his "Three Years in California." says
that Brown rode the whole distance (Los An-
geles to Monterey) of four hundred and sixty
miles in fifty-two hours, during which time he
had not slept. His intelligence was for Com-
modore Stockton and, in the nature of the case,
was not committed to paper, except a f«w words
rolled in a cigar fastened in his hair. But the
commodore had sailed for San Francisco and
it was necessary he should go one hundred and
forty miles further. He was quite exhausted
and was allowed to sleep three hours. Before
day he was up and away on his journey. Gil-

128

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

lespic, in a letter published in the Los Angeles
Star, May 28, 1858, describing Juan Flaco's ride
says: "Before sunrise of the 29th he was lying
in the bushes at San Francisco, in front of the
Congress frigate, waiting for the early market
boat to come on shore, and he delivered my
dispatches to Commodore Stockton before 7
o'clock."

In trying to steal through the picket line of
the Mexicans at Los Angeles, he was discovered
and pursued by a squad of them. A hot race
ensued. Finding the enemy gaining on him he
forced his horse to leap a wide ravine. A shot
from one of his pursuers mortally wounded his
horse, which, after running a short distance, fell
dead. Flaco, carrying his spurs and riata, made
his way on foot in the darkness to Las Virgines,
a distance of twenty-seven miles. Here he se-
cured another mount and again set off on his
perilous journey. The trail over which Flaco
held his way was not like "the road from Win-
chester town, a good, broad highway leading
down," but instead a Camino de heradura, bridle
path, now winding up through rocky canons,
skirting along the edge of precipitous cliffs, then
zigzagging down chaparral covered mountains;
now over the sands of the sea beach and again
across long stretches of brown mesa, winding
through narrow valleys and out onto the rolling
hills — a trail as nature made it, unchanged by
the hand of man. Such was the highway over
which Flaco's steeds "stretched away with ut-
most speed." Harassed and pursued by the
enemy, facing death night and day, with scarcely
a stop or a stay to eat or sleep, Juan Flaco rode
six hundred miles.

"Of all the rides since the birth of time,
Told in story or sung in rhyme,
The fleetest ride that ever was sped,"

was Juan Flaco's ride from Los Angeles to San
Francisco. Longfellow has immortalized the
"Ride of Paul Revere," Robert Browning tells
in stirring verse of the riders who brought the
good news from Ghent to Aix, and Buchanan
Read thrills us with the heroic measures of Sher-
idan's Ride. No poet has sung of Juan Flaco's
wonderful ride, fleeter, longer and more perilous
than any of these. Flaco rode six hundred miles

through the enemy's country, to bring aid to a
besieged garrison, while Revere and Jorris and
Sheridan were in the country of friends or pro-
tected by an army from enemies.

Gillespie's situation was growing more and
more desperate each day. B. D. Wilson, who
with a company of riflemen had been on an
expedition against the Indians, had been ordered
by Gillespie to join him. They reached the
Chino ranch, where a fight took place between
them and the Californians. Wilson's men being
out of ammunition were compelled to sur-
render. In the charge upon the adobe, where
Wilson and his men had taken refuge, Carlos
Ballestaros had been killed and several Cali-
fornians wounded. This and Gillespie's stubborn
resistance had embittered the Californians against
him and his men. The Chino prisoners had been
saved from massacre after their surrender by
the firmness and bravery of Varela. If Gillespie
continued to hold the town his obstinacy might
bring down the vengeance of the Californians
not only upon him and his men, but upon many
of the American residents of the south, who had
favored their countrymen.

Finally Flores issued his ultimatum to the
Americans, surrender within twenty-four hours
or take the consequences of an onslaught by
the Californians, which might result in the mas-
sacre of the entire garrison. In the meantime
he kept his cavalry deployed on the hills, com-
pletely investing the Americans. Despairing of
assistance from Stockton, on the advice of Wil-
son, who had been permitted by Flores to inter-
cede with Gillespie, articles of capitulation were
drawn up and signed by Gillespie and the leaders
of the Californians. On the 30th of September
the Americans marched out of the city with all
the honors of war, drums beating, colors flyin|*
and two pieces of artillery mounted on carts
drawn by oxen. They arrived at San Pedro
without molestation and four or five days later
embarked on the merchant ship Vandalia, which
remained at anchor in the bay. Gillespie in
his march was accompanied by a few of the
American residents and probably a dozen of the
Chino prisoners, who had been exchanged for
the same number of Californians, whom he
had held under arrest most likely as hostages.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RhX'ORD.

Gillespie took two cannon with him when he
evacuated the city, leaving two spiked and broken
on Fort Hill. There seems to have been a pro-
viso in the articles of capitulation requiring him

to deliver the guns to Flores on reaching the
embarcadero. ff there was such a stipulation Gil-
lespie violated it. lie spiked the guns, broke off
the trunnions and rolled one of them into the bay.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DEFEAT AND RETREAT OF MERVINE'S MEN.

THE revolt of the Californians at Los An-
geles was followed by similar uprisings
in the different centers of population
where American garrisons were stationed. Upon
the receipt of Gillespie's message Commodore
Stockton ordered Captain Mervine to proceed
at once to San Pedro to regain, if possible, the
lost territory. Juan Flaco had delivered his
message to Stockton on September 30. Early
on the morning of October 1st, Captain Mer-
vine got under way for San Pedro. "He went
ashore at Sausalito," says Gillespie, "on some
trivial excuse, and a dense fog coming on he
was compelled to remain there until the 4th."

Of the notable events occurring during the
conquest of California there are few others of
which there are so contradictory accounts as
that known as the battle of Dominguez Ranch,
whereMervine was defeated and compelled to re-
treat to San Pedro. Historians differ widely
in the number engaged and in the number killed.
The following account of Mervine's expedition
I take from a log book kept by Midshipman and
Acting-Lieut. Robert C. Duvall of the Savannah.
He commanded a company during the battle.
This book was donated to the Historical So-
ciety of Southern California by Dr. J. E. Cowles
of Los Angeles, a nephew of Lieutenant Duvall.
The account given by Lieutenant Duvall is one
of the fullest and most accurate in existence.

"At 9.30 a. m." (October 1, 1846), says Lieu-
tenant Duvall, "we commenced working out of
the harbor of San Francisco on the ebb tide.
The ship anchored at Sausalito, where, on ac-
count of a dense fog, it remained until the 4th,
when it put to sea. On the 7th the ship entered
the harbor of San Pedro. At 6:30 p. m., as we
9

were standing in for anchorage, we made out
the American merchant ship Yandalia, having
on her decks a body of men. On passing she
saluted with two guns, which was repeated with
three cheers, which we returned. * * * *
Brevet Capt. Archibald Gillespie came on board
and reported that he had evacuated the Pueblo
de Los Angeles on account of the overpowering
force of the enemy and had retired with his
men on board the Yandalia after having spiked
his guns, one of which he threw into the water.
He also reported that the whole of California
below the pueblo had risen in arms against our
authorities, headed by Florcs, a Mexican cap-
tain on furlough in this country, who had but
a few days ago given his parole of honor not
to take up arms against the United States. We
made preparations to land a force to march to
the pueblo at daylight.

"October 8, at 6 a. m., ail the boats left the
ship for the purpose of landing the forces, num-
bering in all two hundred and ninety-nine men.
including thevolunteers under command of Cap-
tain Gillespie. At 6:30 all were landed without
opposition, the enemy in small detachments re-
treating toward the pueblo. From their move-
ments we apprehended that their whole force
was near. Captain Mervine sent on board ship
for a reinforcement of eighty men, under com-
mand of Lieut. R. B. Hitchcock. At 8 a. m.
the several companies, all under command of
Capt William Mervine, took up the line of
march for the purpose of retaking the pueblo.
The enemy retreated as our forces advanced.
(On landing, William A. Smith, first cabin boy.
was killed by the accidental discharge of a Colt's
pistol.) The reinforcements under the com-

130

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

mand of Lieut. R. B. Hitchcock returned on
board ship. For the first four miles our march
was through hills and ravines, which the enemy
might have taken advantage of, but preferred to
occupy as spectators only, until our approach.
A few shots from our flankers (who were the
volunteer riflemen) would start them off; they
returned the compliment before going. The
remainder of our march was performed over a
continuous plain overgrown with wild mustard,
rising in places to six or eight feet in height.
The ground was excessively dry, the clouds of
dust were suffocating and there was not a breath
of wind in motion. There was no water on our
line of march for ten or twelve miles and we
suffered greatly from thirst.

"At 2:30 p. m. we reached our camping
ground. The enemy appeared in considerable
numbers. Their numbers continued to increase
until sundown, when they formed on a hill near
us, gradually inclining towards our camp. They
were admirably formed for a cavalry charge.
We drew up our forces to meet them, but find-
ing they were disposed to remain stationary,
the marines, under command of Captain Mars-
ton, the Colt's riflemen, under command of
Lieut. I. B. Carter and myself, and the volun-
teers, under command of Capt. A. Gillespie, were
ordered to charge on them, which we did. They
stood their ground until our shots commenced
'telling' on them, when they took to flight in
every direction. They continued to annoy us by
firing into our camp through the night. About 2
a. m. they brought a piece of artillery and fired
into our camp, the shot striking the ground
near us. The marines, riflemen and volunteers
were sent in pursuit of the gun, but could see
or hear nothing of it.

"We left our camp the next morning at 6
o'clock. Our plan of march was in column by
platoon. We had not proceeded far before the
enemy appeared before us drawn up on each
side of the road, mounted on fine horses, each
man armed with a lance and carbine. They also
had a field piece (a four-pounder), to which were
hitched eight or ten horses, placed on the road
ahead of us.

"Captain Mervine, thinking it was the enemy's
intention to throw us into confusion by using

their gun on us loaded with round shot and
copper grape shot and then charge us with their
cavalry, ordered us to form a square — which was
the order of march throughout the battle. When
within about four hundred yards of them the
enemy opened on us with their artillery. We
made frequent charges, driving them before us,
and at one time causing them to leave some of
their cannon balls and cartridges; but owing to
the rapidity with which they could carry off
the gun, using their lassos on every part, en-
abled them to choose their own distance, en-
tirely out of all range of our muskets. Their
horsemen kept out of danger, apparently con-
tent to let the gun do -the fighting. They kept
up a constant fire with their carbines, but these
did no harm. The enemy numbered between
one hundred and seventy-five and two hundred
strong.

"Finding it impossible to capture the gun, the
retreat was sounded. The captain consulted
with his officers on the best steps to be taken.
It was decided unanimously to return on board
ship. To continue the march would sacrifice
a number of lives to no purpose, for, admitting
we could have reached the pueblo, all com-
munications would be cut off with the ship, and
we would further be constantly annoyed by their
artillery without the least chance of capturing
it. It was reported that the enemy were be-
tween five and six hundred strong at the city
and it was thought he had more artillery. On
retreating they got the gun planted on a hill
ahead of us.

"The captain made us an address, saying to
the troops that it was his intention to march
straight ahead in the same orderly manner in
which we had advanced, and that sooner than
he would surrender to such an enemy, he would
sacrifice himself and every other man in his
command. The enemy fired into us four times
on the retreat, the fourth shot falling short, the
report of the gun indicating a small quantity of
powder, after which they remained stationary
and manifested no further disposition to molest
us. We proceeded quietly on our march to the
landing, where we found a body of men under
command of Lieutenant Hitchcock with two
nine-pounder cannon gotten from the Vandalia

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

18]

to render us assistance in case we should need it.

"We presented truly a pitiable condition,
many being barely able to drag one foot after
the other from excessive fatigue, having gone
through the exertions and excitement in battle
and afterwards performing a march of eighteen
or twenty miles without rest. This is the first
battle I have ever been engaged in, and, having
taken particular notice of those around me, I
can assert that no men could have acted more
bravely. Even when their shipmates were fall-
ing by their sides, I saw but one impulse and
that was to push forward, and when retreat was
ordered I noticed a general reluctance to turn
their backs to the enemy.

"The following is a list of the killed and
wounded: Michael Hoey, ordinary seaman,
killed; David Johnson, ordinary seaman, killed;
William H. Berry, ordinary seaman, mortally
wounded; Charles Sommers, musician, mortally
wounded; John Tyre, seaman, severely
wounded; John Anderson, seaman, severely
wounded; recovery doubtful. The following-
named were slightly wounded: William Con-
land, marine; Hiram Rockvill, marine; H. Lin-
land, marine; James Smith, marine.

"On the following morning we buried the
bodies of William A. Smith, Charles Sommers,
David Johnson and Michael Hoey on an island
in the harbor.

"At ii a. m. the captain called a council of
commissioned officers regarding the proper
course to adopt in the present crisis, which de-
cided that no force should be landed, and that
the ship remain here until further orders from
the commodore, who is daily expected."

Entry in the log for Sunday, nth: "William
H. Berry, ordinary seaman, departed this life
from the effect of wounds received in battle.
Sent his body for interment to Dead Man's
Island, so named by us. Mustered the com-
mand at quarters, after which performed divine
service."

From this account it will be seen that the
number killed and died of wounds received in
battle was four; number wounded six, and one
accidentally killed before the battle. On October
22d, Henry Lewis died and was buried on the
island. Lewis' name does not appear in the list

of wounded. It is presumable that he died of
disease. Six of the crew of the Savannah were
buried on Dead Man's Island, four of whom
were killed in battle. Lieutenant Duvall gives
the following list of the officers in the "Expedi-
tion on the march to retake Pueblo dc Los An
geles:" Capt. William Mervinc, commanding;
Capt. Ward Marston, commanding marines;
Brevet Capt. A. H. Gillespie, commanding vol-
unteers; Lieut. Henry W. Queen, adjutant;
Lieut. B. F. Pinckney, commanding first com-
pany; Lieut. W. Rinckindoff, commanding sec-
ond company; Lieut. I. B. Carter, Colt's rifle-
men; Midshipman R. D. Minor, acting lieutcn
ant second company; Midshipman S. P. Griffin,
acting lieutenant first company; Midshipman P-
G. Walmough, acting lieutenant second com-
pany; Midshipman R. C. Duvall, acting lieuten-
ant Colt's riflemen; Captain Clark and Captain
Goodsall, commanding pikemen; Lieutenant
Hiensley, first lieutenant volunteers; Lieutenant
Russ'eau, second lieutenant volunteers.

The piece of artillery that did such deadly
execution on the Americans was the famous Old
Woman's gun. It was a bronze four-pounder, or
pedrero (swivel-gun) that for a number of years
had stood on the plaza in front of the church,
and was used for firing salutes on feast days and
other occasions. When on the approach of
Stockton's and Fremont's forces Castro aban-
doned his artillery and fled, an old lady, Dona
Clara Cota de Reyes, declared that the gringos
should not have the church's gun; so, with the
assistance of her daughters, she buried it in a
cane patch near her residence, which stood on
the east side of Alameda street, near First.
When the Californians revolted against Gil-
lespie's rule the gun was unearthed and used
against him. The Historical Society of South-
ern California has in its possession a brass
grapeshot, one of a charge that was fired into
the face of Fort Hill at Gillespie's men when
they were posted on the hill. This gun was in
the exhibit of trophies at the New Orleans Ex-
position in 18S5. The label on it read: "Trophy
53, No. 63, Class 7. Used by Mexico against
the United States at the battle of Dominguez'
Ranch, October 9, 1846; at San Gabriel and the
Mesa. January 8 and 9. 1847; used by tr,e United

132

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Suites forces against Mexico at Mazatlan, No-
vember II, 1847; Urios (crew all killed or
wounded), Palos Prietos, December 13, 1847,
and Lower California, at San Jose, February 15,
1848."

Before the battle the old gun had been
mounted on forward axle of a Jersey wagon,
which a man by the name of Hunt had brought
across the plains the year before. It was lashed
to the axle by means of rawhide thongs, and
was drawn by riatas, as described by Lieutenant
Duvall. The range was obtained by raising or
lowering the pole of the wagon. Ignacio Aguilar
acted as gunner, and having neither lanyard or
pent-stock to fire it, he touched off the gun with
the lighted end of a cigarette. Never before or
since, perhaps, was a battle won with such crude
artillery. Jose Antonio Carrillo was in com-
mand of the Californians. During the skirmish-
ing of the first day he had between eighty and
ninety men. During the night of the 8th Flores
joined him with a force of sixty men. Next
morning Flores returned to Los Angeles, taking
with him twenty men. Carrillo's force in the
battle numbered about one hundred and twenty
men. Had Mervine known that the Californians
had fired their last shot (their powder being ex-
hausted) he could have pushed on and captured
the pueblo.

The expulsion of Gillespie's garrison from
Los Angeles and the defeat of Mervine's force
raised the spirits of the Californians, and there
was great rejoicing at the pueblo. Detachments
of Flores' army were kept at Sepulveda's rancho,
the Palos Verdes, and at Temple's rancho of the
Cerritos, to watch the Savannah and report any
attempt at landing. The leaders of the revolt
were not so sanguine of success as the rank and
file. They were without means to procure arms
and supplies. There was a scarcity of ammuni-
tion, too. An inferior article of gunpowder was
manufactured in limited quantities at San
Gabriel. The only uniformity in weapons was
in lances. These were rough, home-made af-
fairs, the blade beaten out of a rasp or file, and
the shaft a willow pole about eight feet long.
These weapons were formidable in a charge
against infantry, but easily parried by a swords-
man in a cavalry charge.

After the defeat of Mervine, Flores set about
reorganizing the territorial government. He
called together the departmental assembly. It
met at the capital (Los Angeles) October 26th.
The members present, Figueroa, Botello, Guerra
and Olvera, were all from the south. The as-
sembly decided to fill the place of governor,
vacated by Pico, and that of comandante-gen-
eral, left vacant by the flight of Castro.

Jose Maria Flores, who was now recognized
as the leader of the revolt against American rule,
was chosen to fill both offices, and the two of-
fices, as had formerly been the custom, were
united in one person. He chose Narciso Bo-
tello for his secretary. Flores, who was Mex-
ican born, was an intelligent and patriotic officer.
He used every means in his power to prepare
his forces for the coming conflict with the
Americans, but with little success. The old
jealousy of the hijos del pais against the Mex-
ican would crop out, and it neutralized his
efforts. There were bickerings and complaints
in the ranks and among the officers. The na-
tives claimed that a Californian ought to be
chief in command.

The feeling of jealousy against Flores at
length culminated in open revolt. Flores had
decided to send the prisoners taken at the Chino
fight to Mexico. His object was twofold — first,
to enhance his own glory with the Mexican
government, and, secondly, by showing what
the Californians had already accomplished to
obtain aid in the coming conflict. As most of
these men were married to California wives,
and by marriage related to many of the leading
California families of the south, there was at
once a family uproar and fierce denunciations
of Flores. But as the Chino prisoners were
foreigners, and had been taken while fighting
against the Mexican government, it was neces-
sary to disguise the hostility to Flores under
some other pretext. He was charged with the
design of running away to Sonora with the pub-
lic funds. On the night of December 3, Francisco
Rico, at the head of a party of Californians, took
possession of the cuartel, or guard house, and
arrested Flores. A special session of the as-
sembly was called to investigate the charges.

Flores expressed his willingness to give up

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

L38

his purpose of sending the Chino prisoners to
Mexico, and the assembly found no foundation
to the charge of his design of running away
with the public funds, nor did they find any
funds to run away with. Flores was liberated,
and Rico imprisoned in turn.

Flores was really the last Mexican governor
of California. Like Pico, he was elected by the
territorial legislature, but he was not confirmed
by the Mexican congress. Generals Scott and
Taylor were keeping President Santa Anna and

his congress on the move so rapidly they had no
time to spare for California affairs.

Flores was governor from October 26, 1846,
to January 8, 1847.

With a threatened invasion by the Americans
and a divided people within, it was hard times
in the old pueblo. The town had to stippl)
the army with provisions. The few who pos-
sessed money hid it away and all business was
suspended except preparations to meet the
invaders.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FINAL CONQUEST OF CALIFORNIA.

COMMODORE STOCKTON, convinced
that the revolt of the Californians was
a serious affair, ordered Fremont's bat-
talion, which had been recruited to one hun-
dred and sixty men, to proceed to the south to
co-operate with him in quelling the rebellion.
The battalion sailed on the Sterling, but shortly
after putting to sea, meeting the Vandalia, Fre-
mont learned of Mervine's defeat and also that
no horses could be procured in the lower coun-
try; the vessel was put about and the battalion
landed at Monterey, October 28. It was decided
to recruit the battalion to a regiment and
mounting it to march down the coast. Recruit-
ing was actively begun among the newly ar-
rived immigrants. Horses and saddles were
procured by giving receipts on the government,
payable after the close of the war or by confisca-
tion if it brought returns quicker than receipts.

The report of the revolt in the south quickly
spread among the Californians in the north and
they made haste to resist their spoilers. Manuel
Castro was made comandante of the military
forces of the north, headquarters at San Luis
Obispo. Castro collected a force of about one
hundred men, well mounted but poorly armed.
His purpose was to carry on a sort of guerrilla
warfare, capturing men and horses from the
enemy whenever an opportunity offered.

Fremont, now raised to the rank of lieuten-
ant-colonel in the regular army with head-

quarters at Monterey, was rapidly mobilizing his
motley collection of recruits into a formidable
force. Officers and men were scouring the
country for recruits, horses, accouterments and
supplies. Two of these recruiting squads en-
countered the enemy in considerable force and
an engagement known as the battle of Natividad
ensued. Capt. Charles r>urroughs with thirty-
four men and two hundred horses, recruited at
Sacramento, arrived at San Juan Bautista, No-
vember 15, on his way to Monterey on the same
day Captain Thompson, with about the same
number of men recruited at San Jose, reached
San Juan. The Californians, with the design of
capturing the horses, made a night march from
their camp on the Salinas. At Gomez rancho
they took prisoner Thomas O. Larkin, the
American consul, who was on his way from
Monterey to San Francisco on official business.
On the morning of the 16th the Americans be-
gan their march for Monterey. At Gomez
rancho their advance learned of the presence of
the enemy and of the capture of Larkin. A
squad of six or eight scouts was sent out to find
the Californians. The scouts encountered a
detachment of Castro's force at Encinalitos
(Little Oaks) and a fight ensued. The main body
of the enemy came up and surrounded the grove
of oaks. The scouts, though greatly outnum-
bered, were well armed with long range rifles and
held the enemy at bay, until Captains Burroughs

134

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and Thompson brought up their companies.
Burroughs, who seems to have been the ranking
officer, hesitated to charge the Californians, who
had the superior force, and besides he was fear-
ful of losing his horses and thus delaying Fre-
mont's movements. But, taunted with cowardice
and urged on by Thompson, a fire eater, who
was making loud protestations of his bravery,
Burroughs ordered a charge. The Americans,
badly mounted, were soon strung out in an ir-
regular line. The Californians, who had made a
feint of retreating, turned and attacked with
vigor, Captain Burroughs and four or five others
were killed. The straggling line fell back on the
main body and the Californians, having ex-
pended their ammunition, retreated. The loss
in killed and wounded amounted to twelve or
fifteen on each side.

The only other engagement in the north was
the bloodless battle of Santa Clara. Fremont's
methods of procuring horses, cattle and other
supplies was to take them and give in payment
demands on the government, payable after the
close of the war. After his departure the same
method was continued by the officers of the
garrisons at San Francisco, San Jose and Mon-
terey. Indeed, it was their only method of pro-
curing supplies. The quartermasters were
without money and the government without
credit. On the 8th of December, Lieutenant
Bartlett, also alcalde of Yerba Buena, with a
squad of five men started down the peninsula
toward San Jose to purchase supplies. Fran-
cisco Sanchez, a rancher, whose horse and cattle
corrals had been raided by former purchasers,
with a band of Californians waylaid and cap-
tured Bartlett and his men. Other California
rancheros who had lost their stock in similar
raids rallied to the support of Sanchez and soon
he found himself at the head of one hundred
men. The object of their organization was
rather to protect their propertythan to fight. The
news soon spread that the Californians had re-
volted and were preparing to massacre the
Americans. Captain Weber of San Jose had a
company of thirty-three men organized for de-
fense. There was also a company of twenty
men under command of Captain Aram stationed
at the ex-mission of Santa Clara. On the 29th

of December, Capt. Ward Marston with a de-
tachment of thirty-four men and a field piece in
charge of Master de Long and ten sailors was
sent to Santa Clara. The entire force collected
at the seat of war numbered one hundred and
one men. On January 2 the American force
encountered the Californians, one hundred
strong, on the plains of Santa Clara. Firing at
long range began and continued for an hour or
more. Sanchez sent in a flag of truce asking an
armistice preparatory to the settlement of diffi-
culties. January 3, Captain Maddox arrived
from Monterey with fifty-nine mounted men,
and on the 7th Lieutenant Grayson came with
fifteen men. On the 8th a treaty of peace was
concluded, by which the enemy surrendered
Lieutenant Bartlett and all the other prisoners,
as well as their arms, including a small field
piece and were permitted to go to their homes.
Upon "reliable authority" four Californians were
reported killed, but their graves have never been
discovered nor did their living relatives, so far
as known, mourn their loss.

Stockton with his flagship, the Congress, ar-
rived at San Pedro on the 23d of October, 1846.
The Savannah was still lying at anchor in the
harbor. The commodore had now at San Pedro
a force of about eight hundred men; but, not-
withstanding the contemptuous opinion he held
of the Californian soldiers, he did not march
against the pueblo. Stockton in his report
says: "Elated by this transient success (Mer-
vine's defeat), which the enemy with his usual
want of veracity magnified into a great victory,
they collected in large bodies on all the adjacent
hills and would not permit a hoof except their
own horses to be within fifty miles of San
Pedro." But "in the face of their boasting in-
solence" Stockton landed and again hoisted "the
glorious stars and stripes in the presence of
their horse covered hills." "The enemy had
driven off every animal, man and beast from
that section of the country; and it was not pos-
sible by any means in our power to carry pro-
visions for our march to the city." The city
was only thirty miles away and American sol-
diers have been known to carry rations in their
haversacks for a march of one hundred miles.
The "transient success" of the insolent enemy

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

had evidently made an impression on Stockton.
He estimated the California force in the vicinity
of the landing at eight hundred men, which was
just seven hundred too high. He determined
to approach Los Angeles by way of San Diego,
and on the last day of October he sailed for that
port. B. D. Wilson, Stephen C. Foster and
others attribute Stockton's abandonment of an
attack on Los Angeles from San Pedro to a
trick played on him by Jose Antonio Carrillo.
Carrillo was in command of the detachment
stationed at the Cerritos and the Palos Verdes.
Carrillo was anxious to obtain an interview with
Stockton and if possible secure a cessation of
hostilities until the war then progressing in
Mexico should be decided, thus settling the
fate of California. B. D. Wilson, one of the
Chino prisoners, was sent with a Mexican ser-
geant to raise a white flag as the boats of the
Congress approached the landing and present
Carrillo's proposition for a truce. Carrillo, with
the intention of giving Stockton an exaggerated
idea of the number of his troops and thus ob-
taining more favorable terms in the proposed
treaty, collected droves of wild horses from the
plains; these his caballeros kept in motion, pass-
ing and repassing through a gap in the hills,
which was in plain view from Stockton's vessel.
Owing to the dust raised by the cavalcade it was
• impossible to discover that most of the horses
were riderless. The troops were signalled to re-
turn to the vessel, and the commodore shortly
afterwards sailed to San Diego. Carrillo al-
ways regretted that he made too much demon-
stration.

As an illustration of the literary trash that
has been palmed off for California history, I
give an extract from Frost's Pictorial History
of California, a book written the year after
the close of the Mexican war by Prof.
John Frost, a noted compiler of histories, who
writes LL. D. after his name. It relates to
Stockton's exploits at San Pedro. "At the
Rancho Sepulveda (the Palos Verdes) a large
force of Californians were posted, Commodore
Stockton sent one hundred men forward to re-
ceive the fire of the enemy and then fall back
on the main body without returning it. The
main body of Stockton's army was formed in a

L35

triangle with the guns hid by the men. By the
retreat of the advance party the enemy were
decoyed close to the main force, when the wings
(of the triangle) were extended and a deadly tire
from the artillery opened upon the astonished
Californians. More than one hundred were
killed, the same number wounded and one hun-
dred prisoners taken." The mathematical ac-
curacy of Stockton's artillerists was truly
astonishing. They killed a man for every one
wounded and took a prisoner for every man
they killed. As Florcs' army never amounted
to more than three hundred, it we arc to believe
Frost, Stockton had all the enemy "present or
accounted for." This silly fabrication of Frost's
runs through a number of so-called histories of
California. Stockton was a brave man and a
very energetic commander, but he would boast
of his achievements, and his reports are unre-
liable.

As previously mentioned, Fremont after his
return to Monterey proceeded to recruit a force
to move against Los Angeles by land from Mon-
terey. His recruits were principally obtained
from the recently arrived immigrants. Each man
was furnished with a horse and was to receive
$25 a month. A force of about four hundred
and fifty was obtained. Fremont left Monterey
November 17 and rendezvoused at San Juan
Bautista, where he remained to the 29th of the
month organizing his battalion. On the 29th
of November he began his march southward to
co-operate with Stockton against Flores.

After the expulsion of Gillespie and his men
from Los Angeles, detachments from Flores'
army were sent to Santa Barbara and San
Diego to recapture these places. At Santa Bar-
bara Fremont had left nine men of his battalion
under Lieut. Theodore Talbot to garrison the
town. A demand was made on the garrison to
surrender by Colonel Garfias of Flores' army.
Two hours were given the Americans to decide.
Instead of surrendering they fell back into the
hills, where they remained three or four da;
hoping that reinforcements might be sent them
from Monterey. Their only subsistence was the
flesh of an old gray mare of Daniel Hill's that
thev captured, brought into camp and killed.
They secured one of Micheltorena's cholos that

130

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

had remained in the country and was living in
a canon among the hills for a guide. He fur-
nished them a horse to carry their blankets and
conducted them through the mountains to the
San Joaquin valley. Here the guide left them
with the Indians, he returning to Santa Barbara.
The Indians fed them on chia (wild flaxseed),
mush and acorn bread. They traveled down the
San Joaquin valley. On their journey they lived
on the flesh of wild horses, seventeen of which
they killed. After many hardships they reached
Monterey on the 8th of November, where they
joined Fremont's battalion.

Captain Merritt, of Fremont's battalion, had
been left at San Diego with forty men to hold
the town when the battalion marched north to
co-operate with Stockton against Los Angeles.
Immediately after Gillespie's retreat, Francisco
Rico was sent with fifty men to capture the
place. He was joined by recruits at San Diego.
Merritt being in no condition to stand a siege,
took refuge on board the American whale ship
Stonington, which was lying at anchor. After
remaining on board the Stonington ten days,
taking advantage of the laxity of discipline
among the Californians, he stole a march on
them, recapturing the town and one piece of
artillery. He sent Don Miguel de Pedrorena,
who was one of his allies, in a whale boat with
four sailors to San Pedro to obtain supplies
and assistance. Pedrorena arrived at San Pedro
on the 13th of October with Merritt's dis-
patches. Captain Mervine chartered the whale
ship Magnolia, which was lying in the San
Pedro harbor, and dispatched Lieutenant Minor,
Midshipman Duvall and Morgan with thirty-
three sailors and fifteen of Gillespie's volun-
teers to reinforce Merritt. They reached San
Diego on the 16th. The combined forces of
Minor and Merritt, numbering about ninety
men, put in the greater part of the next two
weeks in dragging cannon from the old fort
and mounting them at their barracks, which
were located on the hill at the edge of the plain
on the west side of the town, convenient to
water. They succeeded in mounting six brass
nine-pounders and building two bastions of
adobes, taken from an old house. There was
constant skirmishing between the hostile parties,

but few fatalities. The Americans claimed to
have killed three of the enemy, and one Amer-
ican was ambushed and killed.

The Californians kept well out of range, but
prevented the Americans from obtaining sup-
plies. Their provisions were nearly exhausted,
and when reduced to almost the last extreme
they made a successful foraging expedition and
procured a supply of mutton. Midshipman Du-
vall thus describes the adventure: "We had
with us an Indian (chief of a numerous tribe)
who, from his knowledge of the country, we
thought could avoid the enemy; and getting
news of a number of sheep about thirty-five miles
to the south on the coast, we determined to send
him and his companion to drive them onto an
island which at low tide connected with the
mainland. In a few days a signal was made on
the island, and the boats of the whale ship
Stonington, stationed off the island, were sent
to it. Our good old Indian had managed,
through his cunning and by keeping concealed
in ravines, to drive onto the island about six hun-
dred sheep, but his companion had been caught
and killed by the enemy. I shall never forget
his famished appearance, but pride in his Indian
triumph could be seen playing in his dark eyes.

"For thirty or forty days we were constantly
expecting, from the movements of the enemy,
an attack, soldiers and officers sleeping on their
arms and ready for action. About the 1st of
November, Commodore Stockton arrived, and,
after landing Captain Gillespie with his com-
pany and about forty-three marines, he suddenly
disappeared, leaving Lieutenant Minor governor
of the place and Captain Gillespie command-
ant."*

Foraging continued, the whale ship Ston-
ington, which had been impressed into the
government service, being used to take parties
down the coast, who made raids inland and
brought back with them catties and horses.

It was probably on one of these excursions
that the flag-making episode occurred, of which
there are more versions than Homer had birth-
places. The correct version of the story is as
follows: A party had been sent under com-

*Log Book of Acting Lieutenant Duvall.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

137

mand of Lieutenant Hensley to Juan Bandini's
rancho in Lower California to bring up bands
of cattle and horses. Bandini was an adherent
of the American cause. He and his family re-
turned with the cavalcade to San Diego. At
their last camping place before reaching the
town, Hensley, in a conversation with Bandini,
regretted they had no flag with them to display
on their entry into thei town. Sehora Bandini
volunteered to make one, which she did from
red, white and blue dresses of her children.
This flag, fastened to a staff, was carried at the
head of the cavalcade when it made its triumphal
entry into San Diego. The Mexican govern-
ment confiscated Bandini's ranchos in Lower
California on account of his friendship to the
Americans during the war.

Skirmishing continued almost daily. Jose
Antonio Carrillo was now in command of the
Californians, their force numbering about one
hundred men. Commodore Stockton returned
and decided to fortify. Midshipman Duvall, in
the Log Book referred to in the previous chap-
ter, thus describes the fort: "The commodore
now commenced to fortify the hill which over-
looked the town by building a fort, constructed
by placing three hundred gallon casks full of
sand close together. The inclosure was twenty
by thirty yards. A bank of earth and small gravel
was thrown up in front as high as the top of
the casks and a ditch dug around on the outside.
Inside a ball-proof vault of ketch was built out
of plank and lined on the inside with adobes, on
top of which a swivel was mounted. The en-
trance was guarded by a strong gate, with a
drawbridge in front across the ditch or moat.
The whole fortification was completed and the
guns mounted on it in about three weeks. Our
men working on the fort were on short allow-
ance of beef and wheat, and for a time without
bread, tea, sugar or coffee, many of them being
destitute of shoes, but there were few com-
plaints.

"About the 1st of December, information hav-
ing been received that General Kearny was at
Warner's Pass, about eighty miles distant, with
one hundred dragoons on his march to San
Diego, Commodore Stockton immediately sent
an escort of fifty men under command of Cap-

tain Gillespie, accompanied by Past Midshipmen
Beale and Duncan, having with them one piece
of artillery. They reached General Kearny with-
out molestation. On the march the combined
force was surprised by about ninety-three Cal-
ifornians at San Pasqual, under command of
Andres Pico, who had been sent to that part
of the country to drive off all the cattle and
horses to prevent us from getting them. In
the battle that ensued General Kearny lost in
killed Captains Johnston and Moore and Lieu-
tenant Hammond, and fifteen dragoons. Seven-
teen dragoons were severely wounded. The
enemy captured one piece of artillery. General
Kearny and Captains Gillespie and Gibson were
severely wounded; also one of the engineer offi-
cers. Some of the dragoons have since died."
* * *

"After the engagement General Kearny took
position on a hill covered with large rocks. It
was well suited for defense. Lieutenant Godey
of Gillespie's volunteers, the night after the
battle, escaped through the enemy's line of sen-
tries and came in witli a letter from Captain
Turner to the commodore. Whilst among the
rocks, Past Midshipman Beale and Kit Carson
managed, under cover of night, to pass out
through the enemy's. ranks, and after three days'
and nights' hard marching through the moun-
tains without water, succeeded in getting safely
into San Diego, completely famished. Soon
after arriving Lieutenant Iieale fainted away,
and for some days entirely lost his reason."

On the night of Beale's arrival, December 9,
about 9 p. m., detachments of two hundred sail-
ors and marines from the Congress and Ports-
mouth, under the immediate command of Cap-
tain Zeilin, assisted by Lieutenants Gray.
Hunter, Renshaw, Parrish. Thompson and
Tilghman and Midshipmen Duvall and Morgan,
each man carrying a blanket, three pounds of
jerked beef and the same of hard-tack, began
their march to relieve General Kearny. They
marched all night and camped on a chaparral
covered mountain during the day. At 4 p. m.
of the second night's march they reached
Kearny's camp, surprising him. Godey. who
had been sent ahead to inform Kearny that as-
sistance was coming, had been captured by the

138

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

enemy. General Kearny had burnt and de-
stroyed all his baggage and camp equipage, sad-
dles, bridles, clothing, etc., preparatory to
forcing his way through the enemy's line.
Burdened with his wounded, it is doubtful
whether he could have escaped. Midshipman
Duvall says: "It would not be a hazard of
opinion to say he would have been overpowered
and compelled to surrender." The enemy dis-
appeared on the arrival of reinforcements. The
relief expedition, with Kearny's men, reached
San Diego after two days' march.

A brief explanation of the reason why Kearny
was at San Pasqual may be necessary. In June,
1846, Gen. Stephen W. Kearny, commander of
the Army of the West, as his command was
designated, left Fort Leavenworth with a force
of regulars and volunteers to take possession of
New Mexico. The conquest of that territory
was accomplished without a battle. Under or-
ders from the war department, Kearny began his
march to California with a part of his force to
co-operate with the naval forces there. Octo-
ber 6, near Socorro, N. M., he met Kit Carson
with an escort of fifteen men en route from Los
Angeles to Washington, bearing dispatches
from Stockton, giving the report of the con-
quest of California. Kearny required Carson to
turn back and act as his guide. Carson was
very unwilling to do so, as he was within a few
days' journey of his home and family, from
whom he had been separated for nearly tv/o
years. He had been guide for Fremont on his
exploring expedition. He, however, obeyed
Kearny's orders.

General Kearny sent back about three hun-
dred of his men, taking with him one hundred
and twenty. After a toilsome march by way
of the Pima villages, Tucson, the Gila and
across the Colorado desert, they reached the
Indian village of San Pasqual (about forty miles
from San Diego), where the battle was fought.
It was the bloodiest battle of the conquest;
Kearny's men, at daybreak, riding on broken
down mules and half broken horses, in an ir-
regular and disorderly line, charged the Califor-
nians. While the American line was stretched
out over the plain Capt. Andres Pico, who was
in command, wheeled his column and charged

the Americans. A fierce hand to hand fight en-
sued, the Californians using their lances and lar-
iats, the Americans clubbed guns and sabers. Of
Kearny's command eighteen men were killed and
nineteen wounded; three of the wounded died.
Only one, Capt. Abraham R. Johnston (a rela-
tive of the author's), was killed by a gunshot;
all the others were lanced. The mules to one
of the howitzers became unmanageable and ran
into the enemy's lines. The driver was killed
and the gun captured. One Californian was
captured and several slightly wounded; none
were killed. Less than half of Kearny's one
hundred and seventy men* took part in the
battle. His loss in killed and wounded was fifty
per cent of those engaged. Dr. John S. Grif-
fin, for many years a leading physician of Los
Angeles, was the surgeon of the command.

The foraging expeditions in Lower Califor-
nia having been quite successful in bringing in
cattle, horses and mules, Commodore Stockton
hastened his preparation for marching against
Los Angeles. The enemy obtained information
of the projected movement and left for the
pueblo.

"The Cyane having arrived," says Duvall,
"our force was increased to about six hundred
men, most of whom, understanding the drill,
performed the evolutions like regular soldiers.
Everything being ready for our departure, the
commodore left Captain Montgomery and offi-
cers in command of the town, and on the 29th of
December took up his line of march for Los An-
geles. General Kearny was second in command
and having the immediate arrangement of the
forces, reserving for himself the prerogative
which his rank necessarily imposed upon him.
Owing to the weak state of our oxen we had
not crossed the dry bed of the river San Diego
before they began breaking down, and the carts,
which were thirty or forty in number, had to be
dragged by the men. The general urged on the
commodore that it was useless to commence
such a march as was before us with our present
means of transportation, but the commodore
insisted on performing at least one day's march

^General Kearny's original force of one hundred and
twenty had been increased by Gillespie's command,
numbering fifty men.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

even if we should have to return the next day.
We succeeded in reaching the valley of the
Soledad that night by dragging our carts. Next
day the commodore proposed to go six miles
farther, which we accomplished, and then con-
' unued six miles farther. Having obtained some
fresh oxen, by assisting the carts up hill we
made ten or twelve miles a day. At San Luis
Rey we secured men, carts and oxen, and after
that our days' marches ranged from fifteen to
twenty-two miles a day.

"The third day out from San Luis Rey a white
flag was seen ahead, the bearer of which had a
communication from Flores, signing himself
'Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Califor-
nia,' asking for a conference for the purpose of
coming to terms, which would be alike 'honor-
able to both countries.' The commodore refused
to answer him in writing, saying to the bearer
of the truce that his answer was, 'he knew no
such person as Governor Flores; that he him-
self was the only governor in California; that
he knew a rebel by that name, a man who had
given his parole of honor not to take up arms
against the government of the United States,
who, if the people of California now in arms
against the forces of the United States would
deliver up, he (Stockton) would treat with them
on condition that they surrender their arms
and retire peaceably to their homes and he
would grant them, as citizens of the United
States, protection from further molestation.'
This the embassy refused to entertain, saying
'they would prefer to die with Flores than to

surrender on such terms.' "

* * *

"On the 8th of January, 1847, they met us on
the banks of the river San Gabriel with between
five and six hundred men mounted on good
horses and armed with lances and carbines,
having also four pieces of artillery planted on
the heights about three hundred and fifty yards
distant from the river. Owing to circumstances
which have occurred since the surrender of the
enemy, I prefer not mentioning the particulars
of this day's battle and also that of the day fol-
lowing, or of referring to individuals concerned
in the successful management of our forces."
(The circumstance to which Lieutenant Duvall

refers was undoubtedly the quarrel between
Stockton and Kearny after the capture of Los
Angeles.) "It is sufficient to say that on the 8th
of January we succeeded in crossing the river
and driving the enemy from the heights. 1 1 a\
ing resisted all their charges, dismounted one
of their pieces and put them to flight in even,
direction, we encamped on the ground they had
occupied during the fight.

"The next day the Californians met us on the
plains of the mesa. For a time the fighting was
carried on by both sides with artillery, but that
proving too hot for them they concentrated
their whole force in a line ahead of us and at a
given signal divided from the center and came
down on us like a tornado, charging us oil all
sides at the same time; but they were effectually
defeated and fled in every direction in the ut-
most confusion. Many of their horses were left
dead on the field. Their loss in the two battles,
as given by Andres Pico, second in command,
was eighty-three killed and wounded; our loss,
three killed (one accidentally), and fifteen or
twenty wounded, none dangerously. The enemy
abandoned two pieces of artillery in an Indian
village near by."

I have given at considerable length Midship-
man Duvall's account of Stockton's march from
San Diego and of the two battles fought, not
because it is the fullest account of those events,
but because it is original historical matter, never
having appeared in print before, and also be-
cause it is the observations of a participant
written at the time the events occurred. In it
the losses of the enemy are greatly exaggerated,
but that was a fault of his superior officers as
well. Commodore Stockton, in his official re-
ports of the two battles, gives the enemy's loss
in killed and wounded "between seventy and
eighty." And General Kearny, in his report of
the battle of San Pasqual, claimed it as a vic-
tory, and states that the enemy left six dead on
the field. The actual loss of the Californians
in the two battles (San Gabriel river and La
Mesa) was three killed and ten or twelve
wounded.*

The killed were Tgnacio Sepulveda. FranciSCO
Rubio. and El Guaymeno, a Yaqui Indian.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

While the events recorded in this chapter
were transpiring at San Diego and its vicinity,
what was the state of affairs in the capital, Los
Angeles? After the exultation and rejoicing
over the expulsion of Gillespie's garrison, Mer-
vine's defeat and the victory over Kearny at
San Pasqual there came a reaction. Dissension
continued between the leaders. There was lack
of arms and laxity of discipline. The army was
but little better than a mob. Obedience to or-
ders of a superior was foreign to the nature of a
Californian. His wild, free life in the saddle
made him impatient of all restraint. Then the
impossibility of successful resistance against
the Americans became more and more apparent
as the final conflict approached. Fremont's
army was moving down on the doomed city
from the north, and Stockton's was coming up
from the south. Either one of these, in num-
bers, exceeded the force that Flores could bring
into action; combined they would crush him
out of existence. The California troops were
greatly discouraged and it was with great diffi-
culty that the officers kept their men together.
There was another and more potent element of
disintegration. Many of the wealthier natives
and all the foreigners, regarding the contest as
hopeless, secretly favored the American cause,
and it was only through fear of loss of property
that they furnished Flores and his officers any
supplies for the army.

During the latter part of December and the
first days of January Flores' army was stationed
at the San Fernando Mission, on the lookout
for Fremont's battalion; but the more rapid
advance of Stockton's army compelled a change
of base. On the 6th and 7th of January Flores
moved his army back secretly through the

Cahuenga Pass, and, passing to the southward
of the city, took position where La Jaboneria
(the soap factory) road crosses the San Gabriel
river. Here his men were stationed in the thick
willows to give Stockton a surprise. Stockton
received information of the trap set for him and
after leaving the Los Coyotes swung off to the
right until he struck the Upper Santa Ana road.
The Californians had barely time to effect a
change of base and get their cannon planted
when the Americans arrived at the crossing.

Stockton called the engagement there the bat-
tle of San Gabriel river; the Californians call it
the battle of Paso de Bartolo, which is the bet-
ter name. The place where the battle was fought
is on bluff just south of the Upper Santa Ana
road, near where the Southern California
railroad crosses the old San Gabriel river. (The
ford or crossing was formerly known as Pico's
Crossing.) There was, at the time of the bat-
tle, but one San Gabriel river. The new river
channel was made in the great flood of 1868.
What Stockton, Emory, Duvall and other
American officers call the battle of the Plains
of the Mesa the Californians call the battle of
La Mesa, which is most decidedly a better name
than the "Plains of the Plain." It was fought at
a ravine, the Canada de Los Alisos, near the
southeastern corner of the Los Angeles city
boundary. In these battles the Californians had
four pieces of artillery, two iron nine-pounders,
the old. woman's gun and the howitzer captured
from Kearny. Their powder was very poor. It
was made at San Gabriel. It was owing to this
that they did so little execution in the fight.
That the Californians escaped with so little
punishment was probably due to the wretched
marksmanship of Stockton's sailors and marines.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XX.

CAPTURE AND OCCUPATION OF THE CAPITAL.

ftFTER the battle of La Mesa, the Amer-
icans, keeping to the south, crossed the
Los Angeles river at about the point
where the south boundary line of the city
crosses it and camped on the right bank. Here,
under a willow tree, those killed in battle were
buried. Lieutenant Emory, in his "Notes of a
Military Reconnoissance," says: "The town,
known to contain great quantities of wine and
aguardiente, was four miles distant (four miles
from the battlefield). From previous experience
of the difficulty of controlling men when enter-
ing towns, it was determined to cross the river
San Fernando (Los Angeles), halt there for
the night and enter the town in the morning,
with the whole day before us.

"After we had pitched our camp, the enemy
came down from the hills, and four hundred
horsemen with four pieces of artillery drew off
towards the town, in order and regularity, whilst
about sixty made a movement down the river on
our rear and left flank. This led us to suppose
they were not yet whipped, as we thought, and
that we should have a night attack.

"January 10 (1847) — . Just as we had raised
our camp, a flag of truce, borne by Mr. Celis, a
Castilian; Mr. Workman, an Englishman, and
Alvarado, the owner of the rancho at the Alisos,
was brought into camp. They proposed, on
behalf of the Californians, to surrender their
dear City of the Angels provided we would re-
spect property and persons. This was agreed
to, but not altogether trusting to the honesty
of General Flores, who had once broken his
parole, we moved into the town in the same
order we should have done if expecting an at-
tack. It was a wise precaution, for the streets
were full of desperate and drunken fellows, who
brandished their arms and saluted us with every
term of reproach. The crest, overlooking the
town, in rifle range, was covered with horsemen
engaged in the same hospitable manner.

"Our men marched steadily on, until crossing
the ravine leading into the public square (plaza),
when a fight took place amongst the Califor-
nians on the hill; one became disarmed and to
avoid death rolled down the hill towards us,
his adversary pursuing and lancing him in the
most cold-blooded manner. The man tumbling
down the hill was supposed to be one of our
vaqueros, and the cry of 'rescue him' was
raised. The crew of the Cyane, nearest the
scene, at once and without any orders, halted
and gave the man that was lancing him a volley ;
strange to say, he did not fall. The general
gave the jack tars a cursing, not so much for
the firing without orders, as for their bad marks-
manship."

Shortly after the above episode, the Cali-
fornians did open fire from the hill on the
vaqueros in charge of the cattle. (These
vaqueros were Californians in the employ of the
Americans and were regarded by their country-
men as traitors.) A company of riflemen was
ordered to clear the hill. A single volley ef-
fected this, killing two of the enemy. This was
the last bloodshed in the war; and the second
conquest of California was completed as the first
had been by the capture of Los Angeles. Two
hundred. men, with two pieces of artillery, were
stationed on the hill.

The Angelehos did not exactly welcome the
invaders with "bloody hands to inhospitable
graves," but they did their best to let them know
they were not wanted. The better class of the
native inhabitants closed their houses and took
refuge with foreign residents or went to the
ranchos of their friends in the country. The
fellows of the baser sort, who were in pos-
session of the city, exhausted their vocabularies
of abuse on the invading gringos. There was
one paisano who excelled all his countrymen in
this species of warfare. It is a pity his name
has not been preserved in history with that of

142

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

other famous scolds and kickers. He rode by
the side of the advancing column up Main street,
firing volleys of invective and denunciation at
the hated gringos. At certain points of his
tirade he worked himself to such a pitch of
indignation that language failed him; then he
would solemnly go through the motions of
"Make ready, take aim!" with an old shotgun
he carried, but when it came to the order "Fire!"
discretion got the better of his valor; he low-
ered his gun and began again, firing invective
at the gringo soldiers; his mouth would go off
if his gun would not.

Commodore Stockton's headquarters were in
the Abila house, the second house on Olvera
street, north of the plaza. The building is still
standing, but has undergone many changes in
fifty years. A rather amusing account was re-
cently given me by an old pioneer of the manner
in which Commodore Stockton got possession
of the house. The widow Abila and her daugh-
ters, at the approach of the American army, had
abandoned their house and taken refuge with
Don Luis Vignes of the Aliso. Vignes was a
Frenchman and friendly to both sides. The
widow left a young Californian in charge of her
house (which was finely furnished), with strict
orders to keep it closed. Stockton had with him
a fine brass band, something new. in California.
When the troops halted on the plaza, the band
began to play. The boyish guardian of the
Abila casa could not resist the temptation to
open the door and look out. The enchanting
music drew him to the plaza. Stockton and his
staff, hunting for a place suitable for headquar-
ters, passing by, found the door invitingly open,
entered, and, finding the house deserted, took
possession. The recreant guardian returned to
find himself dispossessed and the house in pos-
session of the enemy. "And the band played on."

It is a fact not generally known that there
were two forts planned and partially built on
Fort Hill during the war for the conquest of
California. The first was planned by Lieut. Wil-
liam H. Emory, topographical engineer of Gen-
eral Kearny's staff, and work was begun on it
by Commodore Stockton's sailors and marines.
The second was planned by Lieut. J. W. David-
son, of the First United States Dragoons, and

built by the Mormon battalion. The first was
not completed and not named. The second was
named Fort Moore. Their location seems to
have been identical. The first was designed to
hold one hundred men. The second was much
larger. Flores' army was supposed to be in the
neighborhood of the city ready to make a dash
into it, so Stockton decided to fortify.

"On January nth," Lieutenant Emory writes,
"I was ordered to select a site and place a fort
capable of containing a hundred men. With
this in view a rapid reconnoissance of the town
was made and the plan of a fort sketched, so
placed as to enable a small garrison to com-
mand the town and the principal avenues to it,
the plan was approved."

"January 12. I laid off the work and before
night broke the first ground. The population
of the town and its dependencies is about three
thousand; that of the town itself about fifteen
hundred. * * * Here all the revolutions
have had their origin, and it is the point upon
which any Mexican force from Sonora would
be directed. It was therefore desirable to estab-
lish a fort which, in case of trouble, should en-
able a small garrison to hold out till aid might
come from San Diego, San Francisco or Mon-
terey, places which are destined to become cen-
ters of American settlements."

"January 13. It rained steadily all day and
nothing was done on the work. At night I
worked on the details of the fort."

"January 15. The details to work on the
fort were by companies. I sent to Captain
Tilghman, who commanded on the hill, to de-
tach one of the companies under his command
to commence the work. He furnished, on the
16th, a company of artillery (seamen from the
Congress) for the day's work, which was per-
formed bravely, and gave me great hopes of
success."

On the 18th Lieutenant Emory took his de-
parture with General Kearny for San Diego.
From there he was sent with despatches, via
Panama, to the war department. In his book
he says: "Subsequent to my departure the en-
tire plan of the fort was changed, and I am not
the projector of the work finally adopted for
defense of that town."

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

As previously stated, Fremont's battalion
began its march down the coast on the 29th of
.November, 1846. The winter rains set in with
great severity. The volunteers were scantily
provided with clothing and the horses were in
poor condition. Many of the horses died of
starvation and hard usage. The battalion en-
countered no opposition from the enemy on its
march and did no fighting. On the nth of
January, a few miles above San Fernando, Colo-
nel Fremont received a message from General
Kearny informing him of the defeat of the
enemy and the capture of Los Angeles. That
night the battalion encamped in the mission
buildings at San Fernando. From the mission
that evening Jesus Pico, a cousin of Gen. An-
dres Pico, set out to find the Californian army
and open negotiations with its leaders. Jesus
Pico, better known as Tortoi, had been arrested
at his home near San Luis Obispo, tried by
court-martial and sentenced to be shot for
breaking his parole. Fremont, moved by the
pleadings of Pico's wife and children, pardoned
him. He became a warm admirer and devoted
friend of Fremont's.

He found the advance guard of the Califor-
nians encamped at Verdugas. He was detained
here, and the leading officers of the army were
summoned to a council. Pico informed them
of Fremont's arrival and the number of his men.
With the combined forces of Fremont and
Stockton against them, their cause was hopeless.
He urged them to surrender to Fremont, as they
could obtain better terms from him than from
Stockton.

General Flores, who held a commission in the
Mexican army, and who had been appointed by
the territorial assembly governor and comand-
ante-general by virtue of his rank, appointed
Andres Pico general and gave him command
of the army. The same night he took his de-
parture for Mexico, by way of San Gorgonio
Pass, accompanied by Colonel Garfias, Diego
Sepulveda, Manuel Castro, Segura, and about
thirty privates. General Pico, on assuming com-
mand, appointed Francisco Rico and Francisco
de La Guerra to go with Jesus Pico to confer
with Colonel Fremont. Fremont appointed as
commissioners to negotiate a treaty, Major P.

B. Reading, Major William II. Russell and
Capt. Louis M'cLane. On the return of Gucrra
and Rico to the Californian camp, Gen. Andrea
Pico appointed as commissioners, Jose Antonio
Carrillo, commander of the cavalry squadron,
and Agustin Olvera, diputado of the assembly,
and moved his army near the river at Cahuenga.
On the 13th Fremont moved his camp to the
Cahuenga. The commissioners met in the de-
serted ranch-house, and the treaty was drawn
up and signed.

The principal conditions of the treaty or ca-
pitulation of "Cahuenga," as it was termed, were
that the Californians, on delivering up their ar-
tillery and public arms, and promising not again
to take arms during the war, and conforming
to the laws and regulations of the United States,
shall be allowed peaceably to return to their
homes. They were to be allowed the same rights
and privileges as are allowed to citizens of the
United States, and were not to be compelled
to take an oath of allegiance until a treaty of
peace was signed between the United States and
Mexico, and were given the privilege of leaving
the country if they wished to. An additional
section was added to the treaty on the 16th at
Los Angeles releasing the officers from their
paroles. Two cannon were surrendered, the
howitzer captured from General Kearny at San
Pasqual and the woman's gun that won the bat-
tle of Dominguez. On the 14th, Fremont's bat-
talion marched through the Cahuenga Fass to
Los Angeles in a pouring rainstorm, and en-
tered it four days after its surrender to Stock-
ton. The conquest of California was com-
pleted. Stockton approved the treaty, although
it was not altogether satisfactory to him. On
the 16th he appointed Colonel Fremont gov-
ernor of the territory, and William H. Russell,
of the battalion, secretary of state.

This precipitated a quarrel between Stockton
and Kearny, which had been brewing for some
time. General Kearny claimed that under bit
instructions from the government he should be
recognized as governor. As he had directly under
his command but the one company of dragoons
that he brought across the plain \vi;h him. he
was unable to enforce his authority. He left on
the 18th for San Diego, taking with him the

141

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

officers of his staff. On the 20th Commo- join their ships. Shortly afterwards Commo-
dore Stockton, with his sailors and marines, dore Stockton was superseded in the command
marched to San Pedro, where they all em- of the Pacific squadron by Commodore Shu-
barked on a man-of-war for San Diego to re- brick.

CHAPTER XXI.

TRANSITION AND TRANSFORMATION.

THE capitulation of Gen. Andres Pico at
Cahuenga put an end to the war in Cali-
fornia. The instructions from the secre-
tary of war were to pursue a policy of concilia-
tion towards the Californians with the ultimate
design of transforming them into American citi-
zens. Colonel Fremont was left in command at
Los Angeles. He established his headquarters
on the second floor of the Bell block (corner of
Los Angeles and Aliso streets), then the best
building in the city. One company of his bat-
talion was retained in the city ; the others, under
command of Captain Owens, were quartered at
the Mission San Gabriel.

The Mormons had been driven out of Illinois
and Missouri. A sentiment of antagonism had
been engendered against them and they had
begun their migration to the far west, pre-
sumably to California. They were encamped on
the Missouri river at Kanesville, now Council
Bluffs, preparatory to crossing the plains, when
hostilities broke out between the United States
and Mexico, in April, 1846. A proposition was
made by President Polk to their leaders to raise
a battalion of five hundred men to serve as
United States volunteers for twelve months.
These volunteers, under command of regular
army officers, were to march to Santa Fe, or,
if necessary, to California, where, at the expira-
tion of their term of enlistment, they were to be
discharged and allowed to retain their arms.
Through the influence of Brigham Young and
other leaders, the battalion was recruited and
General Kearny, commanding the Army of the
West, detailed Capt. James Allen, of the First
United States Dragoons, to muster them into
the service and take command of the battalion.
On the i6tb of July, at Council Bluffs, the bat-

talion was mustered into service and on the 14th
of August it began its long and weary march.
About eighty women and children, wives and
families of the officers and some of the enlisted
men, accompanied the battalion on its march.
Shortly after the beginning of the march, Allen,
who had been promoted to lieutenant-colonel,
fell sick and died. The battalion was placed
temporarily under the command of Lieut. A. J.
Smith, of the regular army. At Santa Fe
Lieut. -Col. Philip St. George Cooke took com-
mand under orders from General Kearny. The
battalion was detailed to open a wagon road by
the Gila route to California. About sixty of
the soldiers who had become unfit for duty and
all the women except five were sent back and
the remainder of the force, after a toilsome jour-
ney, reached San Luis Rey, Cal., January 29,
1847, where it remained until ordered to Los
Angeles, which place it reached March 17.

Captain Owens, in command of Fremont's
battalion, had moved all the artillery, ten pieces,
from Los Angeles to San Gabriel, probably with
the design of preventing it falling into the hands
of Colonel Cooke, who was an adherent of
General Kearny. General Kearny, under addi-
tional instructions from the general government,
brought by Colonel Mason from the war depart-
ment, had established himself as governor at
Monterey. With a governor in the north and
one in the south, antagonistic to each other.
California had fallen back to its normal condi-
tion under Mexican rule. Colonel Cooke,
shortly after his arrival in the territory, thus de-
scribes the condition prevailing: "General
Kearny is supreme somewhere up the coast.
Colonel Fremont is supreme at Pueblo de Los
Angeles; Colonel Stockton is commander-in-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

l IS

chief at San Diego; Commodore Shubrick the
same at Monterey; and I at San Luis Rey; and
we are all supremely poor, the government hav-
ing no money and no credit, and we hold the
territory because Mexico is the poorest of all."

Col. R. B. Mason was appointed inspector of
the troops in California and made an official
visit to Los Angeles. In a misunderstanding
about some official matters he used insulting
language to Colonel Fremont. Fremont
promptly challenged him to fight a duel. The
challenge was accepted; double-barreled shot-
guns were chosen as the weapons and the
Rancho Rosa del Castillo as the place of meet-
ing. Mason was summoned north and the duel
was postponed until his return. General Kearny,
hearing of the proposed affair of honor, put a
stop to further proceedings by the duelists.

Col. Philip St. George Cooke, of the Mormon
battalion, was made commander of the military
district of the south with headquarters at Los
Angeles. Fremont's battalion was mustered out
of service. The Mormon soldiers and the two
companies of United States Dragoons who
came with General Kearny were stationed at
Los Angeles to do guard duty and prevent any
uprising of the natives.

Colonel Fremont's appointment as governor
of California had never been recognized by
General Kearny. So when the general had
made himself supreme at Monterey he ordered
Fremont to report to him at the capital and
turn over the papers of his governorship. Fre-
mont did so and passed out of office. He was
nominally governor of the territory about two
months. His appointment was made by Com-
modore Stockton, but was never confirmed by
the president or secretary of war. His jurisdic-
tion did not extend beyond Los Angeles. He
left Los Angeles May 12 for Monterey. From
that place, in company with General Kearny,
on May 31, he took his departure for the states.
The relations between the two were strained.
While ostensibly traveling as one company,
each officer, with his staff and escort, made sep-
arate camps. At Fort Leavenworth General
Kearny placed Fremont under arrest and pre-
ferred charges against him for disobedience of
orders. He was tried by court-martial at Wash-
10

ington and was ably defended by his father-in-
law, Colonel Benton, and his brother-in-lau ,
William Carey Jones. The court found him
guifty and fixed the penalty, dismissal from the
service. President Polk remitted the penalty
and ordered Colonel Fremont to resume ins
sword and report for duty. He did so, but
shortly afterward resigned his commission and
left the army.

While Colonel Cooke was in command of
the southern district rumors reached Los An-
geles that the Mexican general, Bustamente,
with a force of fifteen hundred nun, was pre-
paring to reconquer California. "Positive infor-
mation," writes Colonel Cooke, under date of
April 20, 1847, " has been received that the
Mexican government has appropriated $600,000
towards fitting out this force." It was also re-
ported that cannon and military stores had been
landed at San Vicente, in Lower California.
Rumors of an approaching army came thick and
fast. The natives were supposed to be in league
with Bustamente and to be secretly preparing
for an uprising. Precautions were taken against
a surprise. A troop of cavalry was sent to
Warner's ranch to patrol the Sonora road as
far as the desert. The construction of a fort
on the hill fully commanding the town, which
had previously been determined upon, was
begun and a company of infantry posted on
the hill.

On the 23d of April, three months after work
had ceased on Emory's fort, the construction of
the second fort was begun and pushed vigor-
ously. Rumors continued to come of the ap-
proach of the enemy. May 3, Colonel Cooke
writes: "A report was received through the
most available sources of information that Gen-
eral Bustamente had crossed the Gulf of Cali-
fornia near its head, in boats of the pearl fishers,
and at last information was at a rancho on the
western road, seventy leagues below San
Diego." Colonel Stevenson's regiment of New
York volunteers had recently arrived in Cali-
fornia. Two companies of that regiment had
been sent to Los Angeles and two to San
Diego. The report that Colonel Cooke had re-
ceived reinforcement and that Los Angeles was
being fortified was supposed to have frightened

146

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Bustamente into abandoning his invasion of
California. Bustamente's invading army was
largely the creation of somebody's fertile imag-
ination. The scare, however, had the effect of
hurrying up work on the fort. May 13, Colo-
nel Cooke resigned and Col. J. B. Stevenson
succeeded him in the command of the southern
military district.

Colonel Stevenson continued work on the
fort and on the 1st of July work had progressed
so far that he decided to dedicate and name it
on the 4th. He issued an official order for the
celebration of the anniversary of the birthday of
American independence at this port, as he called
Los Angeles. "At sunrise a Federal salute will
be fired from the field work on the hill which
commands this town and for the first time from
this point the American standard will be dis-
played. At 11 o'clock all the troops of the
district, consisting of the Mormon battalion, the
two companies of dragoons and two companies
of the New York volunteers, were formed in a
hollow square at the fort. The Declaration of
Independence was read in English by Captain
Stuart Taylor and in Spanish by Stephen C.
Foster. The native Californians, seated on their
horses in rear of the soldiers, listened to Don
Esteban as he rolled out in sonorous Spanish the
Declaration's arraignment of King George III.,
and smiled. They had probably never heard of
King George or the Declaration of Independ-
ence, either, but they knew a pronunciamiento
when they heard it, and after a pronunciamiento
in their governmental system came a revolution,
therefore they smiled at the prospect of a gringo
revolution. "At the close of this ceremony
(reading of the Declaration) the field work will
be dedicated and appropriately named; and at
12 o'clock a national salute will be fired. The
field work at this post having been planned and
the work conducted entirely by Lieutenant Da-
vidson of the First Dragoons, he is requested
to hoist upon it for the first time on the morn-
ing of the 4th the American standard." * * *
The commander directs that from and after the
4th instant the fort shall bear the name of
Moore. Benjamin D. Moore, after whom the fort
was named, was captain of Company A, First
United States Dragoons. He was killed by a

lance thrust in the disastrous charge at the bat-
tle of San Pasqual. This fort was located on
what is now called Fort Hill, near the geograph-
ical center of Los Angeles. It was a breastwork
about four hundred feet long with bastions and
embrasures for cannon. The principal em-
brasure commanded the church and the plaza,
two places most likely to be the rallying points
in a rebellion. It was built more for the sup-
pression of a revolt than to resist an invasion.
It was in a commanding position; two hundred
men, about its capacity, could have defended it
against a thousand if the attack came from the
front; but as it was never completed, in an at-
tack from the rear it could easily have been cap-
tured with an equal force.

Col. Richard B. Mason succeeded General
Kearny as commander-in-chief of the troops
and military governor of California. Col. Philip
St. George Cooke resigned command of the
military district of the south May 13, joined
General Kearny at Monterey and went east
with him. As previously stated, Col. J. D. Ste-
venson, of the New York volunteers, succeeded
him. His regiment, the First New York, but
really the Seventh, had been recruited in the
eastern part of the state of New York in the
summer of 1846, for the double purpose of con-
quest and colonization. The United States gov-
ernment had no intention of giving up California
once it was conquered, and therefore this regi-
ment came to the coast well provided with pro-
visions and implements of husbandry. It came
to California via Cape Horn in three transports.
The first ship, the Perkins, arrived at San
Francisco, March 6, 1847; the second, the Drew,
March 19; and the third, the Loo Choo, March
26. Hostilities had ceased in California before
their arrival. Two companies, A and B, under
command of Lieutenant-Colonel Burton, were
sent to Lower California, where they saw hard
service and took part in several engagements.
The other companies of the regiment were sent
to different towns in Alta California to do gar-
rison duty.

Another military organization that reached
California after the conquest was Company F
of the Third United States Artillery. It landed
at Monterey January 28, 1847. It was com"

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

117

manded by Capt. C. Q. Thompkins. With
it came Lieuts. E. O. C. Ord, William T. Sher-
man and H. W. Halleck, all of whom became
prominent in California affairs and attained na-
tional reputation during the Civil war. The
Mormon battalion was mustered out in July,
1847. One company under command of Cap-
tain Hunt re-enlisted. The others made their
way to Utah, where they joined their brethren
who the year before had crossed the plains and
founded the City of Salt Lake. The New York
volunteers were discharged in August, 1848.
After the treaty of peace, in 1848, four compa-
nies of United States Dragoons, under com-
mand of Major L. P. Graham, marched from
Chihuahua, by way of Tucson, to California.
Major Graham was the last military commander
of the south.

Commodore W. Branford Shubrick succeeded
Commodore Stockton in command of the naval
forces of the north Pacific coast. Jointly with
General Kearny he issued a circular or proc-
lamation to the people of California, printed in
English and Spanish, setting forth "That the
president of the United States, desirous to give
and secure to the people of California a share
of the good government and happy civil organ-
ization enjoyed by the people of the United
States, and to protect them at the same time
from the attacks of foreign foes and from inter-
nal commotions, has invested the undersigned
with separate and distinct powers, civil and mil-
itary; a cordial co-operation in the exercise of
which, it is hoped and believed, will have the
happy results desired.

"To the commander-in-chief of the naval
forces the president has assigned the regula-
tion of the import trade, the conditions on which
vessels of all nations, our own as well as foreign,
may be admitted into the ports of the territory,
and the establishment of all port regulations.
To the commanding military officer the presi-
dent has assigned the direction of the operations
on land and has invested him with administra-
tive functions of government over the people
and territory occupied by the forces of the
United States.

"Done at Monterey, capital of California, this
1st day of March, A. D. 1847. W. Branford

Shubrick, commander-in-chief of the naval
forces. S. W. Kearny, Brig.-Gen. United States
Army, and Governor of California."

Under the administration of Col. Richard B.
Mason, the successor of General Kearny as
military governor, the reconstruction, or, more
appropriately, the transformation period began.
The orders from the general government were
to conciliate the people and to make no radical
changes in the form of government. The Mex-
ican laws were continued in force. Just what
these laws were, it was difficult to find out. No
code commissioner had codified the laws and it
sometimes happened that the judge made the
law to suit the case. Under the old regime the al-
calde was often law-giver, judge, jury and exe-
cutioner, all in one. Occasionally there was fric-
tion between the military and civil powers, and
there were rumors of insurrections and inva-
sions, but nothing came of them. The Califor-
nians, with easy good nature so characteristic
of them, made the best of the situation. ' A
thousand things,''' says Judge Hays, "combined
to smooth the asperities of war. Fremont had
been courteous and gay; Mason was just and
firm. The natural good temper of the popula-
tion favored a speedy and perfect conciliation.
The American officers at once found thcmselvc-
happy in every circle. In suppers, balls, visiting
in town and country, the hours glided away with
pleasant reflections."

There were, however, a few individuals who
were not happy unless they could stir up dis-
sensions and cause trouble. One of the chief of
these was Serbulo Yarela, agitator and revolu-
tionist. Yarela, for some offense not specified
in the records, had been committed to prison by
the second alcalde of Los Angeles. Colonel Ste-
venson turned him out of jail, and Yarela gave
the judge a tongue lashing in refuse Castilian.
The judge's official dignity was hurt. He sent
a communication to the ayuntamiento saying:
"Owing to personal abuse which I received at
the hands of a private individual and from the
present military commander. I tender my resig-
nation."

The ayuntamiento sent a communication to
Colonel Stevenson asking why he had turned
Yarela out of jail and why he had insulted the

148

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

judge. The colonel curtly replied that the mili-
tary would not act as jailers over persons guilty
of trifling offenses while the city had plenty of
persons to do guard duty at the jail. As to the
abuse of the judge, he was not aware that any
abuse had been given, and would take no further
notice of him unless he stated the nature of the
insult offered him. The council decided to no-
tify the governor of the outrage perpetrated by
the military commander, and the second alcalde
said since he could get no satisfaction for insults
to his authority from the military despot, he
would resign; but the council would not accept
his resignation, so he refused to act, and the city
had to worry along with one alcalde.

Although foreigners had been coming to Cali-
fornia ever since 1814, their numbers had not
increased very rapidly. Nearly all of these had
found their way there by sea. Those who had
become permanent residents had married native
Californian women and adopted the customs of
the country. Capt. Jedediah S. Smith, in 1827,
crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains from Cali-
fornia and by way of the Humboldt, or, as he
named it, the Mary River, had reached the Great
Salt Lake. From there through the South Pass
of the Rocky mountains the route had been
traveled for several years by the fur trappers.
This latter became the great emigrant route to
California a few years later. A southern route
by way of Santa Fe had been marked out and
the Pattee party had found their way to the
Colorado by the Gila route, but so far no emi-
grant trains had come from the States to Cali-
fornia with women and children. The first of
these mixed trains was organized in western
Missouri in May, 1841. The party consisted of
sixty-nine persons, including men, women and
children. This party divided at Soda Springs,
half going to Oregon and the others keeping on
their way to California. They reached the San
Joaquin valley in November, 1841, after a toil-
scyne journey of six months. The first settle-
ment they found was Dr. Marsh's ranch in what
is now called Contra Costa county. Marsh gave
them a cordial reception at first, but afterwards
treated them meanly.

Fourteen of the party started for the Pueblo
de San Jose. At the Mission of San Jose,

twelve miles from the Pueblo, they were all ar-
rested by order of General Vallejo. One of the
men was sent to Dr. Marsh to have him come
forthwith and explain why an armed force of
his countrymen were roaming around the coun-
try without passports. Marsh secured their re-
lease and passports for all the party. On his
return home he charged the men who had re-
mained at his ranch $5 each for a passport, al-
though the passports had cost him nothing. As
there was no money in the party, each had to
put up some equivalent from his scanty posses-
sions. Marsh had taken this course to reim-
burse himself for the meal he had given the
half-starved emigrants the first night of their
arrival at his ranch.

In marked contrast with the meanness of
Marsh was the liberality of Captain Sutter. Sut-
ter had built a fort at the junction of the Amer-
ican river and the Sacramento in 1839 and had
obtained extensive land grants. His fort was
the frontier post for the overland emigration.
Gen. John Bidwell, who came with the first
emigrant train to California, in a description of
"Life in California Before the Gold Discovery,"
says: "Nearly everybody who came to Califor-
nia then made it a point to reach Sutter's Fort.
Sutter was one of the most liberal and hospita-
ble of men. Everybody was welcome, one man
or a hundred, it was all the same."

Another emigrant train, known as the Work-
man-Rowland party, numbering forty-five per-
sons, came from Santa Fe by the Gila route to
Los Angeles. About twenty-five of this party
were persons who had arrived too late at West-
port, Mo., to join the northern emigrant party,
so they went with the annual caravan of St.
Louis traders to Santa Fe and from there, with
traders and trappers, continued their journey to
California. From 1841 to the American con-
quest immigrant trains came across the plains
every year.

One of the most noted of these, on account of
the tragic fate that befell it, was the Donner
party. The nucleus of this party, George and
Jacob Donner and James K. Reed, with their
families, started from Springfield, 111., in the
spring of 1846. By accretions and combinations,
when it reached Fort Bridger, July 25, it had

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

increased to eighty-seven persons — thirty-six
men, twenty-one women and thirty children,
under the command of George Donner. A new
route called the Hastings Cut-Off, had just been
opened by Lansford W. Hastings. This route
passed to the south of Great Salt Lake and
struck the old Fort Hall emigrant road on the
Humboldt. It was claimed that the "cut-off"
shortened the distance three hundred miles.
The Donner party, by misrepresentations, were
induced to take this route. The cut-off proved
to be almost impassable. They started on the
cut-off the last day of July, and it was the end
of September when they struck the old emigrant
trail on the Humboldt. They had lost most of
their cattle and were nearly out of provisions.
From this on, unmerciful disaster followed them
fast and faster. In an altercation, Reed, one of
the best men of the party, killed Snyder. He
was banished from the train and compelled to
leave his wife and children behind. An old
Belgian named Hardcoop and Wolfinger, a
German, unable to keep up, were abandoned to
die on the road. Pike was accidentally shot by
Foster. The Indians stole a number of their
cattle, and one calamity after another delayed
them. In the latter part of October they had
reached the Truckee. Here they encountered a
heavy snow storm, which blocked all further
progress. They wasted their strength in trying
to ascend the mountains in the deep snow that
had fallen. Finally, finding this impossible, they
turned back and built cabins at a lake since
known as Donner Lake, and prepared to pass
the winter. Most of their oxen had strayed
away during the storm and perished. Those
still alive they killed and preserved the meat.
A party of fifteen, ten men and five women,

known as the "Forlorn Hope,'- started, Decem-
ber 16, on snowshoes to cross the Sierras. They
had provisions for six days, but the journey
consumed thirty-two days. Eight of the ten
men perished, and among them the noble Stan-
ton, who had brought relief to the emigrants
from Sutter's Fort before the snows began to
fall. The five women survived. Upon the ar-
rival of the wretched survivors of the "Forlorn
Hope," the terrible sufferings of the snow-botin.,
immigrants were made known at Sutter's Fort,
and the first relief party was organized, and on
the 5th of February started for the lake. Seven
of the thirteen who started succeeded in reach-
ing the lake. On the 19th they started back
with twenty-one of the immigrants, three of
whom died on the way. A second relief, under
Reed and McCutchen, was organized. Reed
had gone to Yerba Bucna to seek assistance. A
public meeting was called and $1,500 subscribed.
The second relief started from Johnston's
Ranch, the nearest point to the mountains, on
the 23d of February and reached the camp on
March 1st. They brought out seventeen. Two
others were organized and reached Donner
Lake, the last on the 17th of April. The only
survivor then was Kescburg, a German, who
was hated by all the company. There was a
strong suspicion that he had killed Mrs. Don-
ner, who had refused to leave her husband (who
was too weak to travel) with the previous relief.
There were threats of hanging him. Kescburg
had saved his life by eating the bodies of the
dead. Of the original party of eighty-seven, a
total of thirty-nine perished from starvation.
Most of the survivors were compelled to resort
to cannabalism. They were not to blame if they
did.

150

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XXII.

MEXICAN LAWS AND AMERICAN OFFICIALS.

UPON the departure of General Kearny,
May 31, 1847, Col. Richard B. Mason
became governor and commander-in-
chief of the United States forces in California
by order of the president. Stockton, Kearny
and Fremont had taken their departure, the
dissensions that had existed since the conquest
of the territory among the conquerors ceased,
and peace reigned.

There were reports of Mexican invasions and
suspicions of secret plottings against gringo
rule, but the invaders came not and the plottings
never produced even the mildest form of a Mexi-
can revolution. Mexican laws were adminis-
tered for the most part by military officers. The
municipal authorities were encouraged to con-
tinue in power and perform their governmental
functions, but they were indifferent and some-
times rebelled. Under Mexican rule there was
no trial by jury. The alcalde acted as judge
and in criminal cases a council of war settled the
fate of the criminal. The Rev. Walter Colton,
while acting as alcalde of Monterey, in 1846-47,
impaneled the first jury ever summoned in Cali-
fornia. "The plaintiff and defendant," he writes,
"are among the principal citizens of the country.
The case was one involving property on the one
side and integrity of character on the other. Its
merits had been pretty widely discussed, and
had called forth an unusual interest. One-third
of the jury were Mexicans, one-third Califor-
nians and the other third Americans. This mix-
ture may have the better answered the ends of
justice, but I was apprehensive at one time it
would embarrass the proceedings; for the plaint-
iff spoke in English, the defendant in French;
the jury, save the Americans, Spanish, and the
witnesses, all the languages known to California.
By the tact of Mr. Hartnell, who acted as inter-
preter, and the absence of young lawyers, we
got along very well.

"The examination of witnesses lasted five or
six hours. I then gave the case to the jury,
stating the questions of fact upon which they
were to render their verdict. They retired for
an hour and then returned, when the foreman
handed in their verdict, which was clear and
explicit, though the case itself was rather com-
plicated. To this verdict both parties bowed
without a word of dissent. The inhabitants who
witnessed the trial said it was what they liked,
that there could be no bribery in it, that the
opinion of twelve honest men should set the
case forever at rest. And so it did, though
neither party completely triumphed in the issue.
One recovered his property, which had been
taken from him by mistake, the other his char-
acter, which had been slandered by design."

The process of Americanizing the people was
no easy undertaking. The population of the
country and its laws were in a chaotic condition.
It was an arduous task that Colonel Mason and
the military commanders at the various pueblos
had to perform, that of evolving order out of
the chaos that had been brought about by the
change in nations. The native population
neither understood the language nor the cus-
toms of their new rulers, and the newcomers
among the Americans had very little toleration
for the slow-going Mexican ways and methods
they found prevailing. To keep peace between
the factions required more tact than knowledge
of law, military or civil, in the commanders.

Los Angeles, under Mexican domination, had
been the storm center of revolutions, and here
under the new regime the most difficulty was
encountered in transforming the quondam rev-
olutionists into law-abiding and peaceful Amer-
ican citizens. The ayuntamiento was convened
in 1847, a^ter tne conquest, and continued in
power until the close of the year. When the
time came round for the election of a new ayun-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

LSI

tamiento there was trouble. Stephen C. Foster,
Colonel Stevenson's interpreter, submitted a
paper to the council stating that the govern-
ment had authorized him to get up a register of
voters. The ayuntamiento voted to return the
paper just as it was received. Then the colonel
made a demand of the council to assist Stephen
in compiling a register of voters. Regidor Cha-
vez took the floor and said such a register
should not be gotten up under the auspices of
the military, but, since the government had so
disposed, thereby outraging this honorable
body, no attention should be paid to said com-
munication. But the council decided that the
matter did not amount to much, so they granted
the request, much to the disgust of Chavez.
The election was held and a new ayuntamiento
elected. At the last meeting of the old council,
December 29, 1847, Colonel Stevenson ad-
dressed a note to it requesting that Stephen C.
Foster be recognized as first alcalde and judge
of the first instance. The council decided to
turn the whole business over to its successor, to
deal with as it sees fit.

Colonel Stevenson's request was made in ac-
cordance with the wish of Governor Mason
that a part of the civil offices be filled by Amer-
icans. The new ayuntamiento resented the in-
terference. How the matter terminated is best
told in Stephen C. Foster's own words: "Colo-
nel Stevenson was determined to have our in-
auguration done in style. So on the day ap-
pointed, January 1, 1848, he, together with
myself and colleague, escorted by a guard of
soldiers, proceeded from the colonel's quarters
to the alcalde's office. There we found the re-
tiring ayuntamiento and the new one awaiting
our arrival. The oath of office was adminis-
tered by the retiring first alcalde. We knelt to
take the oath, when we found they had changed
their minds, and the alcalde told us that if two
of their number were to be kicked out they
would all go. So they all marched out and left
us in possession. Here was a dilemma, but
Colonel Stevenson was equal to the emergency.
He said he could give us a swear as well as the
alcalde. So we stood up and he administered
to us an oath to support the constitution of
the United States and administer justice in ac-

cordance with Mexican law. I then knew u
much about Mexican law as I did about Chinese,
and my colleague knew as much as I did. Guer-
rero gathered up the books that pertained to his
office and took them to his house, where In-
established his office, and I took the archives
and records across the street to a house I had
rented, and there I was duly installed for the
next seventeen months, the first American al-
calde and carpet-bagger in Los Angeles."

Colonel Stevenson issued a call for the elec-
tion of a new ayuntamiento, but the people
stayed at home and no votes were cast. At tin-
close of the year the voters had gotten over
their pet and when a call was made a council
was elected, but only Californians (hijos del
pais) were returned. The ayuntamientos con-
tinued to be the governing power in the pueblos
until superseded by city and county govern-
ments in 1850.

The most difficult problem that General Kear-
ny in his short term had to confront and, un-
solved, he handed clown to his successor. Colo-
nel Mason, was the authority and jurisdiction
of the alcaldes. Under the Mexican regime
these officers were supreme in the pueblo ->ver
which they ruled. For the Spanish transgressor
fines of various degrees were the usual penalty;
for the mission neophyte, the lash, well laid on,
and labor in the chain gang. There was no
written code that defined the amount of pun-
ishment; the alcalde meted out justice and some-
times injustice, as suited his humor. Kearny
appointed John H. Nash alcalde of Sonoma.
Nash was a rather erratic individual, who had
taken part in the Bear Flag revolution. When
the offices of the prospective California Re-
public were divided among the revolutionists,
he was to be the chief justice. After the col-
lapse of that short-lived republic. Xasli was
elected alcalde. His rule was so arbitrary and
his decisions so biased by favoritism or preju-
dice that the American settlers soon protested
and General Kearny removed him or tried to.
He appointed L. W. Boggs, a recently arrived
immigrant, to the office. Nash refused to sur-
render the books and papers of the office. Lieut.
W. T. Sherman was detailed by Colonel Mason,
after his succession to the office of governor, to

1513

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

proceed to Sonoma and arrest Nash. Sherman
quietly arrested him at night and before the
bellicose alcalde's friends (for he had quite a fol-
lowing) were aware of what was going on,
marched him off to San Francisco. He was
put on board the Dale and sent to Monterey.
Finding that it was useless for him to resist the
authority of the United States, its army and
navy as well, Nash expressed his willingness to
submit to the inevitable, and surrendered his
office. He was released and ceased from troub-
ling. Another strenuous alcalde was William
Blackburn, of Santa Cruz. He came to the
country in 1845, ar>d before his elevation to the
honorable position of a judge of the first in-
stance he had been engaged in making shingles
in the redwoods. He had no knowledge of law
and but little acquaintance with books of any
kind. His decisions were always on the side of
justice, although some of the penalties imposed
were somewhat irregular.

In Alcalde Blackburn's docket for August 14,
1847, appears this entry: "Pedro Gomez was
tried for the murder of his wife, Barbara Gomez,
and found guilty. The sentence of the court is
that the prisoner be conducted back to prison,
there to remain until Monday, the 16th of Au-
gust, and then be taken out and shot." August
17, sentence carried into effect on the 16th ac-
cordingly. William Blackburn, Alcalde.

It does not appear in the records that Black-
burn was the executioner. He proceeded to
dispose of the two orphaned children of the
murderer. The older daughter he indentured to
Jacinto Castro "to raise until she is twenty-one
years of age, unless sooner married, said Ja-
cinto Castro, obligating himself to give her a
good education, three cows and calves at her
marriage or when of age." The younger daugh-
ter was disposed of on similar terms to A. Rod-
riguez. Colonel Mason severely reprimanded
Blackburn, but the alcalde replied that there
was no use making a fuss over it; the man was
guilty, he had a fair trial before a jury and de-
served to die. Another case in his court illus-
trates the versatility of the judge. A Spanish
boy, out of revenge, sheared the mane and tail
of a neighbor's horse. The offense was proved,

but the judge was sorely perplexed when he
came to sentence the culprit. He could find no
law in his law books to fit the case. After pon-
dering over the question a while, he gave this
decision: "I find no law in any of the statutes
to fit this case, except in the law of Moses, 'An
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' Let the
prisoner be taken out in front of this office and
there sheared close." The sentence was imme-
diately executed.

Another story is told of Blackburn, which
may or may not be true. A mission Indian who
had committed murder took the right of sanc-
tuary in the church, and the padre refused to
give him up. Blackburn wrote to the governor,
stating the case. The Indian, considering him-
self safe while with the padre, left the church
in company with the priest. Blackburn seized
him, tried him and hung him. He then reported
to the governor: "I received your order to sus-
pend the execution of the condemned man, but
I had hung him. When I see you I will ex-
plain the affair."

Some of the military commanders of the pre-
sidios and pueblos gave Governor Mason as
much trouble as the alcaldes. These, for the
most part, were officers of the volunteers who
had arrived after the conquest. They were un-
used to "war's alarms," and, being new to
the country and ignorant of the Spanish lan-
guage, they regarded the natives with suspicion.
They were on the lookout for plots and revolu-.
tions. Sometimes they found these incubating
and undertook to crush them, only to discover
that the affair was a hoax or a practical joke.
The Canon Perdido (lost canon) of Santa Bar-
bara episode is a good illustration of the
trouble one "finicky" man can make when en-
trusted with military power.

In the winter of 1847-48 the American bark
Elisabeth was wrecked on the Santa Barbara
coast. Among the flotsam of the wreck was a
brass cannon of uncertain calibre; it might have
been a six, a nine or a twelve pounder. What
the capacity of its bore matters not, for the gun
unloaded made more noise in Santa Barbara
than it ever did when it belched forth shot and
shell in battle. The gun, after its rescue from
a watery grave, lay for some time on the beach,

HISTORICAL AND BI

devoid of carriage and useless, apparently, for
offense or defense.

One dark night a little squad of native Cali-
fornians stole down to the beach, loaded the
gun in an ox cart, hauled it to the estero and
hid it in the sands. What was their object in
taking the gun no one knows. Perhaps they
did not know themselves. It might come handy
in a revolution, or maybe they only intended to
play a practical joke on the gringos. Whatever
their object, the outcome of their -prank must
have astonished them. There was a company
(F) of Stevenson's New York volunteers sta-
tioned at Santa Barbara, under command of
Captain Lippett. Lippett was a fussy, nervous
individual who lost his head when anything un-
usual occurred. In the theft of the cannon he
thought he had discovered a California revolu-
tion in the formative stages, and he determined
to crush it in its infancy. He sent post haste a
courier to Governor Mason at Monterey, in-
forming him of the prospective uprising of the
natives and the possible destruction of the
troops at Santa Barbara by the terrible gun the
enemy had stolen.

Colonel Mason, relying on Captain Lippett's
report, determined to give the natives a lesson
that would teach them to let guns and revolu-
tions alone. He issued an order from headquar-
ters at Monterey, in which he said that ample
time having been allowed for the return of the
gun, and the citizens having failed to produce
it, he ordered that the town be laid under a con-
tribution of $500, assessed in the following man-
ner: A capitation tax of $2 on all males over
twenty years of age; the balance to be paid by
the heads of families and property-holders in the
proportion of the value of their respective real
and personal estate in the town of Santa Bar-
bara and vicinity. Col. J. D. Stevenson was ap-
pointed to direct the appraisement of the prop-
erty and the collection of the assessment. If
any failed to pay his capitation, enough of his
property was to be seized and sold to pay his
enforced contribution.

The promulgation of the order at San^a Bar-
bara raised a storm of indignation at the old
pueblo. Colonel Stevenson came up from Los
Angeles and had an interview with Don Pablo

GRAPHICAL RECORD. 153

de La Guerra, a leading citizen of Santa Bar-
bara. Don Pablo was wrath fully indignant at
the insult put upon his people, but after talking
over the affair with Colonel Stevenson, he be-
came somewhat mollified. He invited Colunel
Stevenson to make Santa Barbara his headquar-
ters and inquired about the brass band at the
lower pueblo. Stevenson took the hint and or-
dered up the band from Los Angeles. July 41 li
had been fixed upon as the day for the payment
of the fines, doubtless with the idea of giving
the Californians a little celebration that would
remind them hereafter of Liberty's natal day.
Colonel Stevenson contrived to have the band
reach Santa Barbara on the night of the 3d
The band astonished Don Pablo and his family
with a serenade. The Don was so delighted
that he hugged the colonel in the most approved
style. The band serenaded all the Dons of note
in town and tooted until long after midnight,
then started in next morning and kept it up
till ten o'clock, the time set for each man to con-
tribute his "dos pesos" to the common fund.
By that time every hombre on the list was so
filled with wine, music and patriotism that the
greater portion of the fine was handed over
without protest. The day closed with a grand
ball. The beauty and the chivalry of Santa Bar-
bara danced to the music of a gringo brass
band and the brass cannon for the nonce was
forgotten.

But the memory of the city's ransom rankled,
and although an American band played Spanish
airs, American injustice was still remembered.
When the city's survey was made in 1850 the
nomenclature of three streets, Canon Perdido
(Lost Cannon street), Ouinientos (Five Hun-
dred street) and Mason street kept the cannon
episode green in the memory of the Barbarciios.
When the pueblo, by legislative act, became a
ciudad, the municipal authorities selected this
device for a seal: In the center a cannon em-
blazoned, encircled with these words. Yale
Ouinientos Pesos — Worth $500, or, more liber-
ally translated, Good-bye, $500. which, by the
way, as the sequel of the story will show, is the
better translation. This seal was used from the
incorporation of the city in 1850 to i860, when
another design was chosen.

154

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

After peace was declared, Colonel Mason sent
the $500 to the prefect at Santa Barbara, with
instructions to use it in building a city jail; and
although there was pressing need for a jail, the
jail was not built. The prefect's needs were
pressing, too. Several years passed; then the
city council demanded that the prefect turn the
money into the city treasury. He replied that
the money was entrusted to him for a specific
purpose, and he would trust no city treasurer
with it. The fact was that long before he had
lost it in a game of monte.

Ten years passed, and the episode of the lost
cannon was but a dimly remembered story of
the olden time. The old gun reposed peacefully
in its grave of sand and those who buried it
had forgotten the place of its interment. One
stormy night in December, 1858, the estero
(creek) cut a new channel to the ocean. In
the morning, as some Barbarehos were survey-
ing the changes caused by the flood, they saw
the muzzle of a large gun protruding from the
cut in the bank. They unearthed it, cleaned off
the sand and discovered that it was El Canon
Perdido, the lost cannon. It was hauled up
State street to Canon Perdido, where it was
mounted on an improvised carriage. But the
sight of it was a reminder of an unpleasant in-
cident. The finders sold it to a merchant for
$80. He shipped it to San Francisco and sold
it at a handsome profit for old brass.

Governor Pio Pico returned from Mexico to
California, arriving at San Gabriel July 17, 1848.
Although the treaty of peace between the
United States and Mexico had been signed and
proclaimed, the news had not reached Califor-
nia. Pico, from San Fernando, addressed let-
ters to Colonel Stevenson at Los Angeles and
Governor Mason at Monterey, stating that as
Mexican governor of California he had come
back to the country with the object of carrying
out the armistice which then existed between
the United States and Mexico. He further
stated that he had no desire to impede the es-
tablishment of peace between the two countries;
and that he wished to see the Mexicans and
Americans treat each other in a spirit of frater-
nity. Mason did not like Pico's assumption of
the title of Mexican governor of California, al-

though it is not probable that Pico intended to
assert any claim to his former position. Gov-
ernor Mason sent a special courier to Los An-
geles with orders to Colonel Stevenson to
arrest the ex-governor, who was then at his
Santa Margarita rancho, and send him to Mon-
terey, but the news of the ratification of the
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo reached Los An-
geles before the arrest was made, and Pico was
spared this humiliation.

The treaty of peace between the United State
and Mexico was signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo,
a hamlet a few miles from the City of Mexico,
February 2, 1848; ratifications -were exchange'1
at Oueretaro, May 30 following, and a procla-
mation that peace had been established between
the two countries was published July 4, 1848.
Under this treaty the United States assumed the
payment of the claims of American citizens
against Mexico, and paid, in addition, $15,000,
000 to Mexico for Texas, New 'Mexico and
Alta California. Out of what was the Mexica"
territory of Alta California there has been
carved all of California, all of Nevada, Utah and
Arizona and part of Colorado and Wyoming.
The territory acquired by the treaty of Guada-
lupe Flidalgo was nearly equal to the aggre-
gated area of the thirteen original states at the
time of the Revolutionary war.

The news of the treaty of peace reached Cali-
fornia August 6, 1848. On the 7th Governor
Mason issued a proclamation announcing the
ratification of the treaty. He announced that
all residents of California, who wished to be-
come citizens of the United States, were ab-
solved from their allegiance to Mexico. Those
who desired to retain their Mexican citizenship
could do so, provided they signified such inten-
tion within one year from May 30, 1848. Those
who wished to go to Mexico were at liberty to
do so without passports. Six months before,
Governor Mason had issued a proclamation pro-
hibiting any citizen of Sonora from entering
California except on official business, and then
only under flag of truce. He also required all
Sonorans in the country to report themselves
either at Los Angeles or Monterey.

The war was over; and the treaty of peace
had made all who so elected, native or foreign

HISTORICAL AND BI

born, American citizens. Strict military rule
was relaxed and the people henceforth were to
be self-governing. American and Californian
were one people and were to enjoy the same
rights and to be subject to the same penalties.
The war ended, the troops were no longer
needed. Orders were issued to muster out the
volunteers. These all belonged to Stevenson's
New York regiment. The last company of the
Mormon battalion had been discharged in April.

GRAPHICAL RECORD. IDC

The New York volunteers were scattered all
along the coast from Sonoma to Cape St. Lucas,
doing garrison duty. They were collected a'
different points and mustered out. Although
those stationed in Alta California had done-
no fighting, they had performed arduous serv-
ice in keeping peace in the conquered territory.
Most of them remained in California after their
discharge and rendered a good account of them-
selves as citizens.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!

SEBASTIAN VISCAINO, from the bay of
Monterey, writing to the King of Spain
three hundred years ago, says of the In-
dians of California: "They are well acquainted
with gold and silver, and said that these were
found in the interior." Viscaino was endeavor-
ing to make a good impression on the mind of
the king in regard to his discoveries, and the
remark about the existence of gold and silver
in California was thrown to excite the cupidity
of his Catholic majesty. The traditions of the
existence of gold in California before any was
discovered are legion. Most of these have been
evolved since gold was actually found. Col. J.
J. Warner, a pioneer of 1831, in his Historical
Sketch of Los Angeles County, briefly and very
effectually disposes of these rumored discov-
eries. He says: "While statements respecting
the existence of gold in the earth of California
and its procurement therefrom have been made
and published as historical facts, carrying back
the date of the knowledge of the auriferous
character of this state as far as the time of the
visit of Sir Francis Drake to this coast, there is
no evidence to be found in the written or oral
history of the missions, the acts and correspond-
ence of the civil or military officers, or in the
unwritten and traditional history of Upper Cali-
fornia that the existence of gold, either with
ores or in its virgin state, was ever suspected
by any inhabitant of California previous to 1841.
and, furthermore, there is conclusive testimony

that the first known grain of native gold dust
was found upon or near the San Francisco ranch,
about forty-five miles north-westerly from Los
Angeles City, in the month of June, 1841. This
discovery consisted of grain gold fields (known
as placer mines), and the auriferous fields dis-
covered in that year embraced the greater part
of the country drained by the Santa Clara river
from a point some fifteen or twenty miles from
its mouth to its source, and easterly beyond
Mount San Bernardino."

The story of the discovery as told by Warner
and by Don Abel Stearns agrees in the main
facts, but differs materially in the date. Stearns
says gold was first discovered by Francisco
Lopez, a native of California, in the month of
March, 1842, at a place called San Francisquito.
about thirty-five miles northwest from this city
(Los Angeles). The circumstances of the dis-
covery by Lopez, as related by himself, arc as
follows: "Lopez, with a companion, was out in
search of some stray horses, and about midday
they stopped under some trees and tied their
horses out to feed, they resting under the shade,
when Lopez, with his sheath-knife, dug up some
wild onions, and in the dirt discovered a piece
of gold, and, searching further, found some
more. He brought these to town, and showed
them to his friends, who at once declared there
must be a placer of gold. This news being cir-
culated, numbers of the citizens went to the
place, and commenced prospecting in the neigh-

156

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

borhood, and found it to be a fact that ihere was
a placer of gold."

Colonel Warner says: "The news of this dis-
covery soon spread among the inhabitants from
Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, and in a few
weeks hundreds of people were engaged in
washing and winnowing the sands and earth of
these gold fields."

Warner visited the mines a few weeks after
their discovery. He says: "From these mines
was obtained the first parcel of California gold
dust received at the United States mint in Phila-
delphia, and which was sent with Alfred Robin-
son, and went in a merchant ship around Cape
Horn." This shipment of gold was 18.34 ounces
before and 18.1 ounces after melting; fineness,
.925; value, $344.75, or over $19 to the ounce,
a very superior quality of gold dust. It was
deposited in the mint July 8, 1843.

It may be regarded as a settled historical fact
that the first authenticated discovery of gold
in Alta California was made on the San Fran-
cisco rancho in the San Feliciano Canon, Los
Angeles county. This canon is about ten miles
northwest of Newhall station on the Southern
Pacific railroad, and about forty miles northwest
of Los Angeles.

The date of the discovery is in doubt. A peti-
tion to the governor (Alvarado) asking permis-
sion to work the placers, signed by Francisco
Lopez, Manuel Cota and Domingo Bermudez is
on file in the California archives. It recites:
"That as Divine Providence was pleased to give
us a placer of gold on the 9th of last March in
the locality of San Francisco rancho, that be-
longs to the late Don Antonio del Valle." This
petition fixes the day of the month the discovery
was made, but unfortunately omits all other
dates. The evidence is about equally divided
between the years 1841 and 1842.

It is impossible to obtain definite information
in regard to the yield of the San Fernando
placers, as these mines are generally called.
William Heath Davis, in his "Sixty Years in
California," states that from $80,000 to $100,000
was taken out for the first two years after their
discovery. He says that Melius at one time
shipped $5,000 of dust on the ship Alert. Ban-
croft says: "That by December, 1843, two thou-

sand ounces of gold had been taken from the
San Fernando mines." Don Antonio Coronel
informed the author that he, with the assistance
of three Indian laborers, in 1842, took out $600
worth of dust in two months. De Mofras, in his
book, states that Carlos Baric, a Frenchman, in
1842, was obtaining an ounce a day of pure gold
from his placer.

These mines were worked continuously from
the time of their discovery until the American
conquest, principally by Sonorians. The dis-
covery of gold at Coloma, January 24, 1848,
drew away the miners, and no work was done
on these mines between 1848 and 1854. After
the latter dates work was resumed, and in 1855,
Francisco Garcia, working a gang of Indians,
is reported to have taken out $65,000 in one
season. The mines are not exhausted, but the
scarcity of water prevents working them profit-
ably.

It is rather a singular coincidence that the
exact dates of both the first and second authen-
ticated discoveries of gold in California are still
among the undecided questions of history. In
the first, we know the day but not the year; in
the second, we know the year but not the day
of the month on which Marshall picked up the
first nuggets in the millrace at Coloma. For a
number of years after the anniversary of Mar-
shall's discovery began to be observed the 19th
of January was celebrated. Of late years Jan-
uary 24 has been fixed upon as the correct date,
but the Associated Pioneers of the Territorial
Days of California, an association made up of
men who were in the territory at the time of
Marshall's discovery or came here before it
became a state, object to the change. For nearly
thirty years they have held their annual dinners
on January 18, "the anniversary of the discovery
of gold at Sutter's sawmill, Coloma, Cal." This
society has its headquarters in New York City.
In a circular recently issued, disapproving of
the change of date from the 18th to the 24th, the
trustees of that society say: "Upon the organi-
zation of this society, February 11, 1875, it was
decided to hold its annual dinners on the anni-
versary of the discovery of gold at Sutter's saw-
mill, Coloma, Cal. Through the Hon. Newton
Booth, of the United States Senate, this infor-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

mation was sought, with the result of a commu-
nication from the secretary of the state of Cali-
fornia to the effect 'that the archives of the
state of California recorded the date as of Jan-
uary 18, 1848. Some years ago this date was
changed by the society at San Francisco to that
of January 24, and that date has been adopted
by other similar societies located upon the
Pacific and Atlantic coasts. This society took
i the matter under advisement, with the result
1 that the new evidence upon which it was pro-
1 posed to change the date was not deemed suffi-
■ cient to justify this society in ignoring its past
records, founded on the authority of the state
of California; therefore it has never accepted
the new date."

Marshall himself was uncertain about the
I exact date. At various times he gave three
different dates — the 18th, 19th and 20th, but
. never moved it along as far as the 24th. In the
past thirty years three different dates — the 18th,
19th and 24th of January — have been celebrated
as the anniversary of Marshall's gold dis-
covery.

The evidence upon which the date was changed
to the 24th is found in an entry in a diary kept
by H. W. Bigler, a Mormon, who was working
for Marshall on the millrace at the time gold
was discovered. The entry reads: "January 24.
This day some kind of metal that looks like
i goold was found in the tailrace." On this
authority about ten years ago the California
Pioneers adopted the 24th as the correct date
of Marshall's discovery.

While written records, especially if made at
the time of the occurrence of the event, are
more reliable than oral testimony given long
after, yet when we take into consideration the
conflicting stories of Sutter, Marshall, the Win-
ners and others who were immediately con-
cerned in some way with the discovery, we must
concede that the Territorial Pioneers have good
reasons to hesitate about making a change in
the date of their anniversary. In Dr. Trywhitt
Brook's "Four Months Among the Gold Find-
ers," a book published in London in 1849, and
long since out of print, we have Sutter's version
of Marshall's discovery given only three months
after that discovery was made. Dr. Brooks

visited Sutter's Fort early in May, 1848, and
received from Sutter himself the story of the
find. Sutter stated that he was sitting in his
room at the fort, one afternoon, when Marshall,
whom he supposed to be at the mill, forty miles
up the American river, suddenly burst in upon
him. Marshall was so wildly excited that Sutter,
suspecting that he was crazy, looked to Bee
whether his rifle was in reach. Marshall declared
that he had made a discovery that would give
them both millions and millions of dollars. Then
he drew his sack and poured out a handful of
nuggets on the table. Sutter, when he had
tested the metal and found that it was gold,
became almost as excited as Marshall. He
eagerly asked if the workmen at the mill knew
of the discovery. Marshall declared that he had
not spoken to a single person about it. They
both agreed to keep it secret. Xext day Sutter
and Marshall arrived at the sawmill. The day
after their arrival, they prospected the bars of
the river and the channels of some of the dry
creeks and found gold in all.

''On our return to the mill," says Sutter, "we
were astonished by the work-people coming dp
to us in a body and showing us some flakes of
gold similar to those we had ourselves procured.
Marshall tried to laugh the matter off with them,
and to persuade them that what they had found
was only some shining mineral of trifling value;
but one of the Indians, who had worked at a
eold mine in the neighborhood of La Paz,
Lower California, cried out: 'Ora! Oral' (gold!
gold!), and the secret was out."

Captain Sutter continues: "I heard afterward
that one of them, a sly Kcntuckian, had dogged
us about and, that, looking on the ground to see
if he could discover what we were in search of,
he lighted on some of the flakes himself."

If this account is correct. Bigler's entry in
his diary was made on the day that the workmen
found gold, which was five or six days after
Marshall's first find, and consequently the 24th
is that much too late for the true date of the
discovery. The story of the discovery given in
the "Life and Adventures of James W. Mar-
shall." by George Frederick Parsons, differ-
materially from Sutter's account. The date of
the discovery given in that book is January 10.

158

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

1848. On the morning of that day Marshall,
alter shutting off the water, walked down the
tailrace to see what sand and gravel had been
removed during the night. (The water was
turned into the tailrace during the night to cut
it deeper.) While examining a mass of debris,
"his eye caught the glitter of something that lay
lodged in a crevice on a riffle of soft granite
some six inches under water." Picking up the
nugget and examining it, he became satisfied
that it must be one of three substances — mica,
sulphurets of copper, or gold. Its weight satis-
fied him that it was not mica. Knowing that
gold was malleable, he placed the specimen on
a flat rock and struck it with another; it bent,
but did not crack or break. He was satisfied
that it was gold. He showed the nugget to his
men. In the course of a few days he had col-
lected several ounces of precious metal. "Some
four days after the discovery it became necessary
for him to go below, for Sutter had failed to
send a supply of provisions to the mill, and the
men were on short commons. While on his way
clown he discovered gold in a ravine at a place
afterwards known as Mormon island. Arrived
at the fort, he interviewed Sutter in his private
office and showed him about three ounces of
gold nuggets. Sutter did not believe it to be
gold, but after weighing it in scales against $3.25
worth of silver, all the coin they could raise at
the fort, and testing it with nitric acid obtained
from the gun shop, Sutter became convinced and
returned to the mill with Marshall. So little did
the workmen at the mill value the discovery that
they continued to work for Sutter until the mill
was completed, March 11, six weeks after the
nuggets were found in the tailrace.

The news of the discovery spread slowly. It was
two months in reaching San Francisco, although
the distance is not over one hundred and twenty-
five miles. The great rush to the mines from
San Francisco did not begin until the middle of
May, nearly four months after the discovery. On
the 10th of May, Dr. Brooks, who was in San
Francisco, writes: "A number of people have ac-
tually started off with shovels, mattocks and
pans to dig the gold themselves. It is not likely,
however, that this will be allowed, for Captain
Folsom has already written to Colonel Mason

about taking possession of the mine on behalf of
the government,it being, he says, on public land."

As the people began to realize the richness
and extent of the discovery, the excitement in-
creased rapidly. May 17, Dr. Brooks writes:
"This place (San Francisco) is now in a perfect
furore of excitement; all the workpeople have
struck. Walking through the town to-day, I
observed that laborers were employed only upon
about half a dozen of the fifty new buildings
which were in course of being run up. The
majority of the mechanics at this place are mak-
ing preparations for moving off to the mines,
and several people of all classes — lawyers, store-
keepers, merchants, etc., are smitten with the
fever; in fact, there is a regular gold , mania
springing up. I counted no less than eighteen
houses which were closed, the owners having
left. If Colonel Mason is moving a force to
the American Fork, as is reported here, their
journey will be in vain."

Colonel Mason's soldiers moved without
orders — they nearly all deserted, and ran off to
the mines.

The first newspaper announcement of the
discovery appeared in The Calif omian of March
15, 1848, nearly two months after the discovery.
But little attention was paid to it. In the issue
of April 19, another discovery is reported. The
item reads: "New gold mine. It is stated that
a new gold mine has been discovered on the
American Fork of the Sacramento, supposed to
be on the land of W. A. Leidesdorff, of this
place. A specimen of the gold has been ex-
hibited, and is represented to be very pure."
On the 29th of May, The Calif omian had sus-
pended publication. "Othello's occupation is
gone," wails the editor. "The majority of our
subscribers and many of our advertising patrons
have closed their doors and places of business
and left town, and we have received one order
after another conveying the pleasant request that
the printer will please stop my paper or my ad,
as I am about leaving for Sacramento."

The editor of the other paper, The California
Star, made a pilgrimage to the mines in the lat-
ter part of April, but gave them no extended
write-up. "Great country, fine climate," he wrote
on his return. "Full flowing streams, mighty

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

168

timber, large crops, luxuriant clover, fragrant
flowers, gold and silver," were his comments on
what he saw. The policy of both papers seems
to have been to ignore as much as possible the
gold discovery. To give it publicity was for a
time, at least, to lose their occupation.

In The Star of May 20, 1848, its eccentric
editor, E. C. Kemble, under the caption "El
Dorado Anew," discourses in a dubious manner
upon the effects of the discovery and the extent
of the gold fields: "A terrible visitant we have
had of late. A fever which has well-nigh de-
populated a town, a town hard pressing upon a
thousand souls, and but for the gracious inter-
position of the elements, perhaps not a goose
would have been spared to furnish a quill to pen
the melancholy fate of the remainder. It has
preyed upon defenseless old age, subdued the
elasticity of careless youth and attacked indis-
criminately sex and class, from town councilman
to tow-frocked cartman, from tailor to tippler,
of which, thank its pestilential powers, it has
beneficially drained (of tipplers, we mean) every
villainous pulperia in the place.

"And this is the gold fever, the only form of
that popular southerner, yellow jack, with which
we can be alarmingly threatened. The insatiate
maw of the monster, not appeased by the easy
conquest of the rough-fisted yeomanry of the
north, must needs ravage a healthy, prosperous
place beyond his dominion and turn the town
topsy-turvy in a twinkling.

"A fleet of launches left this place on Sunday
and Monday last bound up the Sacramento river,
close stowed with human beings, led by love of
filthy lucre to the perennial yielding gold mines
of the north. When any man can find two ounces
a day and two thousand men can find their
hands full, of work, was there ever anything so
superlatively silly!

"Honestly, though, we are inclined to believe
the reputed wealth of that section of country,
thirty miles in extent, all sham, a superb take-in
as was ever got up to guzzle the gullible. But
it is not improbable that this mine, or, properly,
placer of gold can be traced as far south as the
city of Los Angeles, where the precious metal
has been found for a number of years in the bed
of a stream issuing from its mountains, said

to be a continuation of this gold chain which
courses southward from the base of the snow;,
mountains. But our best information respecting
the metal and the quantity in which it is gath-
ered varies much from many reports current, yet
it is beyond a question that no richer mines ot
gold have ever been discovered upon this con-
tinent.

"Should there be no paper forthcoming on
Saturday next, our readers may assure them-
selves it will not be the fault of us individually.
To make the matter public, already our devil has
rebelled, our pressman (poor fellow) last seen
was in search of a pickaxe, and we feel like Mr.
Hamlet, we shall never again look upon the
likes of him. Then, too, our compositors have,
in defiance, sworn terrible oaths against type-
sticking as vulgar and unfashionable. Hope has
not yet fled us, but really, in the phraseology
of the day, 'things is getting curious.' "

And things kept getting more and more curi-
ous. The rush increased. The next issue of
The Star (May 27) announces that the Sacra-
mento, a first-class craft, left here Thursday last
thronged with passengers for the gold mines,
a motley assemblage, composed of lawyers, mer-
chants, grocers, carpenters, cartmen and cooks,
all possessed with the desire of becoming rich.
The latest accounts from the gold country are
highly flattering. Over three hundred men are
engaged in washing gold, and numbers arc con-
tinually arriving from every part of the country.
Then the editor closes with a wail: 'Tersons
recently arrived from the country speak of
ranches deserted and crops neglected and suf-
fered to waste. The unhappy consequence of
this state of affairs is easily foreseen. One more
twinkle, and The Star disappeared in the gloom.
On June 14 appeared a single sheet, the size of
foolscap. The editor announced: "In fewer
words than are usually employed in the an-
nouncement of similar events, we appear before
the remnant of a reading community on this
occasion with the material or immaterial in-
formation that we have stopped the paper, that
its publication ceased with the last regular issue
(June 7). On the approach of autumn, we shali
again appear to announce The Star's redivus.
We have done. Let our parting word be hasto

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

100

luego." (Star and Calif omian reappeared No-
vember 14, 1848. The Star had absorbed The
Calif omian. E. C. Kemble was its editor and
proprietor.)

Although there was no paper in existence on
the coast to spread the news from the gold
fields, it found its way out of California, and
the rush from abroad began. It did not acquire
great force in 1848, but in 1849 the immigration
to California exceeded all previous migrations
in the history of the race.

Among the first foreigners to rush to the
mines were the Mexicans of Sonora. Many of
these had had some experience in placer mining
in their native country, and the report of rich
placers in California, where gold could be had
for the picking up, aroused them from their lazy
self-content and stimulated them to go in search
of it. Traveling in squads of from fifty to one
hundred, they came by the old Auza trail across
the Colorado desert, through the San Gorgonio
Pass, then up the coast and on to the mines.
They were a job lot of immigrants, poor in purse
and poor in brain. They were despised by the
native Californians and maltreated by the Amer-
icans. Their knowledge of mining came in play,
and the more provident among them soon man-
aged to pick up a few thousand dollars, and then
returned to their homes, plutocrats. The im-
provident gambled away their earnings and re-
mained in the country to add to its criminal ele-
ment. The Oi"egonians came- in force, and all
the towns in California were almost depopulated
of their male population. By the close of 1848,
there were ten thousand men at work in the
mines.

The first official report of the discovery was
sent to Washington by Thomas O. Larkin, June
I, and reached its destination about the middle
of September. Lieutenant Beale, by way of
Mexico, brought dispatches dated a month later,
which arrived about the same time as Larkin's
report. These accounts were published in the
eastern papers, and the excitement began.

In the early part of December, Lieutenant
Loeser arrived at Washington with Governor
Mason's report of his observations in the mines
made in August. But the most positive evidence
was a tea caddy of gold dust containing about

two hundred and thirty ounces that Governor
Mason had caused to be purchased in the mines
with money from the civil service fund. This the
lieutenant had brought with him. It was placed
on exhibition at the war office. Here was tan-
gible evidence of the existence of gold in Cali-
fornia, the doubters were silenced and the ex-
citement was on and the rush began.

By the 1st of January, 1849, vessels were fit-
ting out in every seaport on the Atlantic coast
and the Gulf of Mexico. Sixty ships were an-
nounced to sail from New York in February and
seventy from Philadelphia and Boston. All kinds
of crafts were pressed into the service, some to
go by way of Cape Horn, others to land their
passengers at Vera Cruz. Greytown and Chagres,
the voyagers to take their chances on the Pa-
cific side for a passage on some unknown ves-
sel.

With opening of spring, the overland travel
began. Forty thousand men gathered at differ-
ent points on the Missouri river, but principally
at St. Joseph and Independence. Horses, mules,
oxen and cows were used for the propelling
power of the various forms of vehicles that were
to convey the provisions and other impedimenta
of the army of gold seekers. By the 1st of May
the grass was grown enough on the plains to
furnish feed for the stock, and the vanguard of
the grand army of gold hunters started. For
two months, company after company left the
rendezvous and joined the procession until for
one thousand miles there was an almost un-
broken line of wagons and pack trains. The
first half of the journey was made with little
inconvenience, but on the last part there was
great suffering and loss of life. The cholera
broke out among them, and it is estimated that
five thousand died on the plains. The alkali
desert of the Humboldt was the place where the
immigrants suffered most. Exhausted by the
long journey and weakened by lack of food,
many succumbed under the hardship of the des-
ert journey and died. The crossing of the Sierras
was attended with great hardships. From the
loss of their horses and oxen, many were com-
pelled to cross the mountains on foot. Their
provisions exhausted, they would have perished
but for relief sent out from California. The

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

161

greatest sufferers were the woman and children,
who in considerable numbers made the perilous
journey.

The overland immigration of 1850 exceeded
that of 1849. According to record kept at Fort
Laramie, there passed that station during the
season thirty-nine thousand men, two thousand
five hundred women and six hundred children,
making a total of forty-two thousand one hun-
dred persons. These immigrants had with them
when passing Fort Laramie twenty-three thou-
sand horses, eight thousand mules, three thou-
sand six hundred oxen, seven thousand cows
and nine thousand wagons.

Besides those coming by the northern route,
that is by the South Pass and the Humboldt
river, at least ten thousand found their way to
the land of gold by the old Spanish trail, by the
Gila route and by Texas, Coahuila and Chihua-
hua into Arizona, and thence across the Colo-
rado desert to Los Angeles, and from there by
the coast route or the San Joaquin valley to the
mines.

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company had
been organized before the discovery of gold in
California. March 3, 1847, an act of Congress
was passed authorizing the secretary of the navy
to advertise for bids to carry the United States
mails by one line of steamers between New
York and Chagres, and by another line between
Panama and Astoria, Ore. On the Atlantic side
the contract called for five ships of one thousand
five hundred tons burden, on the Pacific side two
of one thousand tons each, and one of six hun-
dred tons. These were deemed sufficient for the
trade and travel between the Atlantic and Pacific-
coasts of the United States. The Pacific Mail
Steamship Company was incorporated April 12,
1848, with a capital stock of $500,000. October
6, 1848, the California, the first steamer for the
Pacific, sailed from New York, and was followed
in the two succeeding months by the Oregon
and the Panama. The California sailed before
the news of the gold discovery had reached New
York, and she had taken no passengers. When
she arrived at Panama, January 30, 1849, she
encountered a rush of fifteen hundred gold hunt-
ers, clamorous for a passage. These had reached
Chagres on sailing vessels, and ascended the
11

Chagres river in bongos or dugouts t<> in,r
gona, and from thence by land to Panama. 1 he-
California had accommodations for only one
hundred, but four hundred managed to find
some place to stow themselves away. The price
of tickets rose to a fabulous sum, as high as
$1,000 having been paid for a steerage pa
The California entered the bay of San Francisco
February 28, 1849, an(l was greeted by the boom
of cannon and the cheers of thousands of people
lining the shores of the bay. The other two
steamers arrived on time, and the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company became the predominant
factor in California travel for twenty years, or up
to the completion of the first transcontinental
railroad in 1869. The charges for fare on these
steamers in the early '50s were prohibitory to
men of small means. From New York to
Chagres in the saloon the fare was $150. 111 the
cabin $120. From Panama to San Francisco in
the saloon, $250; cabin, $200. Add to these the
expense of crossing the isthmus, and the argo-
naut was out a goodly sum when he reached t In-
land of the golden fleece, indeed, he was often
fleeced of his last dollar before he entered the
Golden Gate.

The first effect of the gold discovery on San
Francisco, as we have seen, was to depopulate
it, and of necessity suspend all building opera-
tions. In less than three months the reaction
began, and the city experienced one of the most
magical booms in history. Real estate doubled
in some instances in twenty-four hours. The
Calif omian of September 3, 1848, says: "The
vacant lot on the corner of Montgomery and
Washington streets was offered the day previous
for $5,000 and next day sold readily for $10,000."
Lumber went up in value until it was sold at a
dollar per square foot. Wages kept pace with
the general advance. Sixteen dollars a day was
mechanic's wages, and the labor market was not
overstocked even at these high rates. With the
approach of winter, the gold seekers came Hock-
ing back to the city to find shelter and to spend
their suddenly acquired wealth. The latter was
easily accomplished, but the former was more
difficult. Any kind of a shelter that would keep
out the rain was utilized for a dwelling. Rowi
of tents that circled around the business por-

162

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tion, shanties patched together from pieces of
packing boxes and sheds thatched with brush
from the chaparral-covered hills constituted
the principal dwellings at that time of the future
metropolis of California. The yield of the mines
for 1848 has been estimated at ten million
dollars. This was the result of only a few
months' labor of not to exceed at any time ten
thousand men. The rush of miners did not
reach the mines until July, and mining opera-
tions were mainly suspended by the middle of
October.

New discoveries had followed in quick suc-
cession Marshall's find at Coloma until by the
close of 1848 gold placers had been located on
all the principal tributaries of the Sacramento
and San Joaquin rivers. Some of the richest
yields were obtained from what was known as
"Dry Diggins." These were dry ravines from
which pay dirt had to be packed to water for
washing or the gold separated by dry washing,
tossing the earth into the air until it was
blown away by the wind, the gold, on account
of its weight, remaining in the pan.

A correspondent of the Calif or man, writing
August 15, 1848, from what he designates as
"Dry Diggins," gives this account of the rich-
ness of that gold field: "At the lower mines
(Mormon Island) the miners count the success
of the day in dollars; at the upper mines near
the mill (Coloma), in ounces, and here in
pounds. The only instrument used at first was
a butcher knife, and the demand for that ar-
ticle was so great that $40 has been refused
for one.

"The earth is taken out of the ravines which
make out of the mountains and is carried in
wagons or packed on horses from one to three
miles to water and washed. Four hundred dol-
lars is the average to the cart load. In one in-
stance five loads yielded $16,000. Instances are
known here where men have carried the earth
on their backs and collected from $800 to $1,500
a day."

The rapidity with which the country was ex-
plored by prospectors was truly remarkable.
The editor of the Calif 'or man, who had sus-
pended the publication of his paper on May 29
to visit the mines, returned and resumed it on
July 15 (1848). In an editorial in that issue he
gives his observations: "The country from the
Ajuba (Yuba) to the San Joaquin rivers, a dis-
tance of one hundred and twenty miles, and
from the base toward the summit of the moun-
tains as far as Snow Hill, about seventy miles,
has been explored, and gold found in every
part. There are probably three thousand men,
including Indians, engaged in collecting gold.
The amount collected by each man who works
ranges from $10 to $350 per day. The publisher
of this paper, while on a tour alone to the min-
ing district, collected, with the aid of a shovel,
pick and pan, from $44 to $128 a day, averag-
ing about $100. The largest piece of gold
known to be found weighed four pounds."
Among other remarkable yields the Calif omian
reports these: "One man dug $12,000 in six
days, and three others obtained thirty-six
pounds of pure metal in one day."

CHAPTER XXIV.

MAKING A STATE.

COL. R. B. MASON, who had been
the military governor of California since
the departure of General Kearny in
May, 1847, had grown weary of his task. He
had been in the military service of his country
thirty years and wished to be relieved. His
request was granted, and on the 12th of April,
1849, Brevet Brigadier General Bennett Riley,

his successor, arrived at Monterey and the next
day entered upon his duties as civil governor.
Gen. Persifer F. Smith, who had been appointed
commander of the Pacific division of the United
States army, arrived at San Francisco Febru-
ary 26, 1849, and relieved Colonel Mason of
his military command. A brigade of troops
six hundred and fifty strong had been sent to

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

L68

California for military service on the border
and to maintain order. Most of these promptly
deserted as soon as an opportunity offered and
found their way to the mines.

Colonel Mason, who under the most trying
circumstances had faithfully served his govern-
ment and administered justice to the people of
California, took his departure May i, 1849.
The same year he died at St. Louis of cholera.

A year had passed since the treaty of peace
with Mexico had been signed, which made Cali-
fornia United States territory, but Congress
had done nothing toward giving it a govern-
ment. The anomalous condition existed of citi-
zens of the United States, living in the United
States, being governed by Mexican laws admin-
istered by a' mixed constituency of Mexican-
born and American-born officials. The pro-
slavery element in Congress was determined to
foist the curse of human slavery on a portion
of the territory acquired from Mexico, but the
discovery of gold and the consequent rush of
freemen to the territory had disarranged the
plans of the slave-holding faction in Congress,
and as a consequence all legislation was at a
standstill.

The people were becoming restive at the long
delay. The Americanized Mexican laws and
forms of government were unpopular and it
was humiliating to the conqueror to be gov-
erned by the laws of the people conquered.
The question of calling a convention to form a
provisional government was agitated by the
newspapers and met a hearty response from the
people. Meetings were held at San Jose, De-
cember 11, 1848; at San Francisco, December
21, and at Sacramento, January 6, 1849, to
consider the question of establishing a pro-
visional government. It was recommended by
the San Jose meeting that a convention be held
at that place on the second Monday of January.
The San Francisco convention recommended
the 5th of March; this the Monterey committee
considered too early as it would take the dele-
gates from below fifteen days to reach the pu-
eblo of San Jose. There was no regular mail
and the roads in February (when the delegates
would have to start) were impassable. The
committee recommended Mav 1 as the earliest

date for the meeting to consider the question of
calling of a convention. Sonoma, without wait-
ing, took the initiative and elected ten delegates
to a provisional government convention. I here
was no unanimity in regard to the time of meet-
ting or as to what could be done if the conven-
tion met. It was finally agreed to postpone the
time of meeting to the first Monday of August,
when, if Congress had done nothing toward-*
giving California some form of government bet-
ter than that existing, the convention should
meet and organize a provisional government.

The local government of San Francisco had
become so entangled and mixed up by various
councils that it was doubtful whether it had
any legal legislative body. W hen the term of
the first council, which had been authorized
by Colonel Mason in 1848, was about to ex-
pire an election was held December 27, to
choose their successors. Seven new council-
men were chosen. The old council declared
the election fraudulent and ordered a new one.
An election was held, notwithstanding the pro-
test of a number of the best citizens, and an-
other council chosen. So the city was blessed
or cursed with three separate and distinct coun-
cils. The old council voted itself out of ex-
istence and then there were but two, but that
was one too many. Then the people, disgusted
with the condition of affairs, called a public
meeting, at which it was decided to elect a
legislative assembly of fifteen members, who
should be empowered to make the necessary
laws for the government of the city. An election
was held on the 21st of February, 1849, ar|d a
legislative assembly and justices elected. Then
Alcalde Levenworth refused to turn over the
city records to the Chief Magistrate-elect Nor-
ton. On the 22d of March the legislative as-
sembly abolished the office of alcalde, but
Levenworth still held on to the records. He
was finally compelled by public opinion and a
writ of replevin to surrender the official records
to Judge Norton. The confusion constantly
arising from the attempt to carry on a govern-
ment that was semi-military and semi-Mexican
induced Governor Riley to order an election to
be held August 1st, to elect delegates to a
convention to meet in Monterey September ist.

104

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

1849, to form a state constitution or territorial
organization to be ratified by the people and
submitted to Congress for its approval. Judges,
prefects and alcaldes were to be elected at the
same time in the principal municipal districts.
The constitutional convention was to consist of
thirty-seven delegates, apportioned as follows:
San Diego two, Los Angeles four, Santa Bar-
bara two, San Luis Obispo two, Monterey five,
San Jose five, San Francisco five, Sonoma four,
Sacramento four, and San Joaquin four. In-
stead of thirty-seven delegates as provided for
in the call, forty-eight were elected and seated.

The convention met September I, 1849, at
Monterey in Colton Hall. This was a stone
building erected by Alcalde Walter Colton for
a town hall and school house. The money to
build it was derived partly from fines and partly
from subscriptions, the prisoners doing the
greater part of the work. It was the most
commodious public building at that time in the
territory.

Of the forty-eight delegates elected twenty-
two were natives of the northern states; fifteen
of the slave states; four were of foreign birth,
and seven were native Californians. Several of
the latter neither spoke nor understood the
English language and William E. P. Hartnell
was appointed interpreter. Dr. Robert Semple
of Bear Flag fame was elected president, Will-
iam G. Marcy and J. Ross Browne reporters.

Early in the session the slavery question was
disposed of by the adoption of a section declar-
ing that neither slavery or involuntary servitude,
unless for the punishment of crimes, shall ever
be tolerated in this state. The question of fix-
ing the boundaries of the future state excited
the most discussion. The pro-slavery faction
was led by William M. Gwin, who had a few
months before migrated from Mississippi to
California with the avowed purpose of repre-
senting the new state in the United States sen-
ate. The scheme of Gwin and his southern as-
sociates was to make the Rocky mountains the
eastern boundary. This would create a state
with an era of about four hundred thousand
square miles. They reasoned that when the
admission of the state came before congress the
southern members would oppose the admission

of so large an area under a free state constitu-
tion and that ultimately a compromise might
be effected. California would be split in two
from east to west, the old dividing line, the
parallel of 360 30', would be established and
Southern California come into the Union as a
slave state. There were at that time fifteen
free and fifteen slave states. If two states, one
free and one slave, could be made out of Califor-
nia, the equilibrium between the opposing fac-
tions would be maintained. The Rocky moun-
tain boundary was at one time during the ses-
sion adopted, but in the closing days of the
session the free state men discovered Gwin's
scheme and it was defeated. The present boun-
daries were established by a majority of two.

A committee had been appointed to receive
propositions and designs for a state seal. Only
one design was offered. It was presented by
Caleb Lyon of Lyondale, as he usually signed
his name, but was drawn by Major Robert S.
Garnett, an army officer. It contained a figure
of Minerva in the foreground, a grizzly bear
feeding on a bunch of grapes; a miner with an
uplifted pick; a gold rocker and pan; a view of
the Golden Gate with ships riding at anchor
in the Bay of San Francisco; the peaks of the
Sierra Nevadas in the distance; a sheaf of wheat;
thirty-one stars and above all the word
"Eureka" (I have found it), which might apply
either to the miner or the bear. The design
seems to have been an attempt to advertise the
resources of the state. General Vallejo wanted
the bear taken out of the design, or if allowed
to remain, that he be made fast by a lasso in the
hands of a vaquero. This amendment was re-
jected, as was also one submitted by O. M.
Wozencraft to strike out the figures of the gold
digger and the bear and introduce instead bales
of merchandise and bags of gold. The original
design was adopted with the addition of the
words, "The Great Seal of the State of Califor-
nia." The convention voted to give Lyon $1,000
as full compensation for engraving the seal and
furnishing the press and all appendages.

Garnett, the designer of the seal, was a Vir-
ginian by birth. He graduated from West
Point in 1841, served through the Mexican war
and through several of the Indian wars on the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

UJ5

Pacific coast. At the breaking out of the re-
bellion in 1861 he joined the Confederates and
was made a brigadier general. He was killed
at the battle of Carrick's Ford July 15, 1861.

The constitution was completed on the nth
of October and an election was called by Gov-
ernor Riley to be held on the 13th of November
to vote upon the adoption of the constitution
and to elect state officers, a legislature and mem-
bers of congress.

At the election Peter H. Burnett, recently
from Oregon territory, who had been quite
active in urging the organization of a state gov-
ernment, was chosen governor; John McDou-
gall, lieutenant governor, and George W.
Wright and Edward Gilbert members of con-
gress. San Jose had been designated by the
constitutional convention the capital of the state
pro tern.

The people of San Jose had pledged them-
selves to provide a suitable building for the
meeting of the legislature in hopes that their
town might be made the permanent capital.
They were unable to complete the building de-
signed for a state capital in time for the meet-
ing. The uncomfortable quarters furnished
created a great deal of dissatisfaction. The leg-
islature consisted of sixteen senators and thirty-
six assemblymen. There being no county or-
ganization, the members were elected by
districts. The representation was not equally
distributed; San Joaquin district had more sen-
ators than San Francisco. The senate and as-
sembly were organized on the 17th of Decem-
ber. E. K. Chamberlain of San Diego was
elected president pro tern, of the senate and
Thomas J. White of Sacramento speaker of the
assembly. The governor and lieutenant-gov-
ernor were sworn in on the 20th. The state
government being organized the legislature
proceeded to the election of United States sen-
ators. The candidates were T. Butler King,
John C. Fremont, William M. Gwin. Thomas
J. Henly, John W. Geary, Robert Semple and
H. W. Halleck. Fremont received twenty-nine
out of forty-six votes on the first ballot and was
declared elected. Of the aspirants, T. Butler
King and William M. Gwin represented the
ultra pro-slavery element. King was a cross-

roads politician from down in Georgia, who
had been sent to the coast as a confidential
agent of the government. The officers of the
army and navy were enjoined to "in all matters
aid and assist him in carrying out the views of
the government and be guided by his advice and
council in the conduct of all proper measures
within the scope of those instructions." 1 It-
made a tour of the mines, accompanied by Gen-
eral Smith and his staff; Commodore Ap Catesb)
Jones and staff and a cavalry escort under Lieu
tenant Stoneman. He wore a black stovepipe
hat and a dress coat. He made himself the
laughing stock of the miners and by traveling
in the heat of the day contracted a fever that
very nearly terminated his existence, lie had
been active so far as his influence went in trying
to bring California into the Union with the hope
of representing it in the senate. Gwin had
come a few months before from Mississippi with
the same object in view. Although the free
state men were in the majority in the legislature
they recognized the fact that to elect two sena-
tors opposed to the extension of slavery would
result in arraying the pro-slavery faction in con-
gress against the admission of the state into
the Union. Of the two representatives of the
south, Gwin was the least objectionable and on
the second ballot he was elected. On the
21st Governor Burnett delivered his message.
It was a wordy document, but not marked by
any very brilliant ideas or valuable sugi; ' >nv
Burnett was a southerner from Missouri. He
was hobbied on the subject of the exclusion of
free negroes. The African, free to earn his own
living unrestrained by a master, was. in his
opinion, a menace to the perpetuity of the com-
monwealth.

On the 22d the legislature elected the remain-
ing state officers, viz.: Richard Roman, tr-
urer; John I. Houston, controller; E. J. 1
Kewen, attorney general; Charles J. Whiting,
surveyor-general; S. C. Hastings, chief jus-
tice; Henry Lyons and Nathaniel Bennett. a>-
sociate justices. The legislature continued in
session until April 22, 1850. Although it was
nicknamed the "Legislature of a thousand
drinks," it did a vast amount of work and did
most of it well. It was not made up of hard

10G

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

drinkers. The majority of its members were
above the average legislator in intelligence,
temperance and patriotism. The members were
not there for payorfor political preferment. They
were there for the good of their adopted state and
labored conscientiously for its benefit. The op-
probrious nickname is said to have originated
thus: A roystering individual by the name of
Green had been elected to the senate from Sac-
ramento as a joke. He regarded the whole pro-
ceedings as a huge joke. He kept a supply of
liquors on hand at his quarters and when the
legislature adjourned he was in the habit of call-
ing: "Come, boys, let us take a thousand
drinks."

The state had set up housekeeping without a
cent on hand to defray expenses. There was not
a quire of paper, a pen, nor an inkstand belong-
ing to the state and no money to buy supplies.
After wrestling with the financial problem some
time an act authorizing a loan of $200,000 for
current expenses was passed. Later on in the
session another act was passed authorizing the
bonding of the state for $300,000 with interest
at the rate of three per cent a month. The
legislature divided the state into twenty-seven
counties, created nine judicial districts, passed
laws for the collection of revenue, taxing all
real and personal property and imposing a poll
tax of $5 on all male inhabitants over twen-
ty-one and under fifty years of age.

California was a self-constituted state. It
had organized a state government and put it into
successful operation without the sanction of
congress. Officials, state, county and town, had
been elected and had sworn to support the con-
stitution of the state of California and yet there
was really no state of California. It had not
been admitted into the Union. It was only a
state de facto and it continued in that condition
nine months before it became a state de jure.

When the question of admitting California
uko the Union came before congress it evoked
a bitter controversy. The senate was equally
divided, thirty senators from the slave states
and the same number from the free. There
were among the southern senators some broad
minded and patriotic men, willing to do what
was right, but they were handicapped by an

ultra pro-slavery faction, extremists, who
would willingly sacrifice the Union if by that
they could extend and perpetuate that sum of
all villainies, human slavery. This faction in
the long controversy resorted to every known
parliamentary device to prevent the admission of
California under a free state constitution. To
admit two senators from a free state would de-
stroy the balance of power. That gone, it could
never be regained by the south. The north was
increasing in power and population, while the
south, under the blighting influence of slavery,
was retrograding.

Henry Clay, the man of compromises, under-
took to bridge over the difficulty by a set of
resolutions known as the Omnibus bill. These
were largely concessions to the slave holding
faction for the loss of the territory acquired by
the Mexican war. Among others was this, that
provision should be made by law for the restitu-
tion of fugitive slaves in any state or territory
of the Union. This afterward was embodied
into what was known as the fugitive slave law
and did more perhaps than any other cause to
destroy the south's beloved institution.

These resolutions were debated through
many months and were so amended and changed
that their author could scarcely recognize them.
Most of them were adopted in some form and
effected a temporary compromise.

On August 13th the bill for the admission
of California finally came to a vote. It passed
the senate, thirty-four ayes to eighteen noes.
Even then the opposition did not cease. Ten
of the southern pro-slavery extremists, led by
Jefferson Davis, joined in a protest against the
action of the majority, the language of which
was an insult to the senate and treason to the
government. In the house the bill passed by a
vote of one hundred and fifty ayes to fifty-six
ultra southern noes. It was approved and signed
by President Fillmore September 9, 1850. On
the nth of September the California senators
and congressmen presented themselves to be
sworn in. The slave holding faction in the sen-
ate, headed by Jefferson Davis, who had been
one of the most bitter opponents to the admis-
sion, objected. But their protest availed them
nothing. Their ascendency was gone. We

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

might sympathize with them had their fight
been made for a noble principle, but it was not.
From that day on until the attempt was made
in 1861 these men schemed to destroy the
Union. The admission of California as a free
state was the beginning of the movement to
destroy the Union of States.

The news of the admission of California
reached San Francisco on the morning of Oc-
tober 18, by the mail steamer Oregon, nearly six
weeks after congress had admitted it. Business
was at once suspended, the courts were ad-
journed and the people went wild with excite-
ment. Messengers, mounted on fleet steeds,
spread the news throughout the state. News-
papers from the states containing an account
of the proceedings of congress at the time of
admission sold for $5 each. It was decided to
hold a formal celebration of the event on the
29th and preparations were begun for a grand
demonstration. Neither labor nor money was
spared to make the procession a success. The
parade was cosmopolitan in the fullest meaning
of that word. There were people in it from
almost every nation under the sun. The Chi-
nese made quite an imposing spectacle in the
parade. Dressed in rich native costumes, each
carrying a gaudily painted fan, they marched
under command of their own marshals, Ah He
and Ah Sing. At their head proudly marched
a color bearer carrying a large blue silk ban-
ner, inscribed the "China boys." Following
them came a triumphal car, in which was seated
thirty boys in black trousers and white shirts,
representing the thirty states. In the center of
this group, seated on a raised platform, was a
young girl robed in white with gold and silver
gauze floating about her and supporting a
breast plate, upon which was inscribed "Cali-
fornia, the Union, it must and shall be pre-
served." The California pioneers carried a ban-
ner on which was represented a New Englander
in the act of stepping ashore and facing a na-
tive Californian with lasso and serape. In the
center the state seal and the inscription, "Far
west, Eureka 1846, California pioneers, or-
ganized August, 1850." Army and navy offi-
cers, soldiers, sailors and marines, veterans of
the Mexican war, municipal officers, the fire de-

partment, secret and benevolent societies and as-
sociations, with a company of mounted native
Californians bearing a banner with thirty-one
stars on a blue satin ground with the inscription
in gold letters, California, E Pluribus Unum, all
these various organizations and orders with
their marshals and aids mounted on gaily
caparisoned steeds and decked out with their
gold and silver trimmed scarfs, made an impos-
ing display that has seldom if ever been equaled
since in the metropolis of California.

At the plaza a flag of thirty-one stars was
raised to the mast head. An oration was de-
livered by Judge Nathaniel Bennett and Mrs.
Wills recited an original ode of her own compo-
sition. The rejoicing over, the people settled
down to business. Their unprecedented action
in organizing a state government and putting it
into operation without the sanction of congress
had been approved and legalized by that body.

Like the Goddess Minerva, represented on its
great seal, who sprung full grown from the
brain of Jupiter, California was born a fully ma-
tured state. She passed through no territorial
probation. No state had such a phenomenal
growth in its infancy. No state before or since
has met with such bitter opposition when it
sought admission into the family of states.
Never before was there such a medley of nation-
alities— Yankees, Mexicans, English, Germans.
French, Spaniards, Peruvians, Polynesians.
Mongolians — organized into a state and made
a part of the body politic nolens volens.

The constitutional convention of 1849 did not
definitely fix the state capital. San Jose was
designated as the place of meeting for the legis-
lature and the organization of the state govern-
ment. San Jose had offered to donate a square
of thirty-two acres, valued at $60,000. for cap-
itol grounds and provide a suitable building for
the legislature and state officers. The offer was
accepted, but when the legislature met there
December 15, 1849. the building was unfinished
and for a time the meetings of the legislature
were held at a private residence. There ma a
great deal of complaining and dissatisfaction.
The first capitol of the state was a two-story
adobe building 40x60, which had been intended
for a hotel. It was destroyed by fire April 29.

108

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

1853. The accommodations at San Jose were
so unsatisfactory that the legislature decided
to locate the capital at some other point. Prop-
ositions were received from Monterey, from
Reed of San Jose, from Stevenson & Parker of
New York of the Pacific and from Gen. M. G.
Vallejo. Vallejo's proposition was accepted.
He offered to donate one hundred and fifty-six
acres of land in a new town that he proposed
to lay out on the straits of Carquinez (now Val-
lejo) for a capital site and within two years to
give $370,000 in money for the erection of pub-
lic buildings. He asked that his proposition be
submitted to a vote of the people at the next
general election. His proposition was accepted
by the legislature. At the general election, Octo-
ber 7, 1850, Vallejo received seventy-four hun-
dred and seventy-seven votes; San Jose twelve
hundred and ninety-two, and Monterey three
hundred and ninety-nine. The second legisla-
ture convened at San Jose. General Vallejo ex-
erted himself to have the change made in accord-
ance with the previous proposition. The cit-
izens of San Jose made an effort to retain the
capital, but a bill was passed making Vallejo
the permanent seat of government after the
close of the session, provided General Vallejo
should give bonds to carry out his proposals.
In June Governor McDougal caused the gov-
ernmental archives to be removed from San
Jose to Vallejo.

When the members of the third legislature
met at the new capital January 2, 1852, they
found a large unfurnished and partly unfinished
wooden building for their reception. Hotel ac-
commodations could not be obtained and there
was even a scarcity of food to feed the hungry
lawmakers. Sacramento offered its new court
house and on the 16th of January the legislature
convened in that city. The great flood of

March, 1852, inundated the city and the law-
makers were forced to reach the halls of legis-
lation in boats and again there was dissatisfac-
tion. Then Benicia came to the front with an
offer of her new city hall, which was above
high water mark. General Vallejo had become
financially embarrassed and could not carry out
his contract with the state, so it was annulled.
The offer of Benicia was accepted and on May
18, 1853, that town was declared the permanent
capital.

In the legislature of 1854 the capital question
again became an issue. Offers were made by
several aspiring cities, but Sacramento won with
the proffer of her court house and a block of
land betwen I and J, Ninth and Tenth streets.
Then the question of the location of the capital
got into the courts. The supreme court de-
cided in favor of Sacramento. Before the legis-
lature met again the court house that had been
offered to the state burned down. A new and
more commodious one was erected and rented
to the state at $12,000 a year. Oakland made
an unsuccessful effort to obtain the capital.
Finally a bill was passed authorizing the erection
of a capitol building in Sacramento at a cost
not to exceed $500,000. Work was begun on
the foundation in October, i860. The great
flood of 1861-62 inundated the city and ruined
the foundations of the capitol. San Francisco
made a vigorous effort to get the capital re-
moved to that city, but was unsuccessful. Work
was resumed on the building, the plans were
changed, the edifice enlarged, and, finally, after
many delays, it was ready for occupancy in De-
cember, 1869. From the original limit of half a
million dollars its cost when completed had
reached a million and a half. The amount ex-
pended on the building and grounds to date
foots up $2,600,000.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE ARGONAUTS.

WHEN or by whom the name argonaut
was first applied to the early Cali-
fornia gold seekers I have not been
able to ascertain. The earliest allusion to the
similarity of Jason's voyage after the Golden
Fleece and the miners' rush to the gold fields of
California is found in a caricature published in
the London Punch in 1849. O" ^ shore of
an island is a guide board bearing the inscrip-
tion "California;" near it is a miner digging gold
and presumably singing at his work. In a
boat near the shore is a fat individual, a typical
"Johnny Bull." He is struggling desperately
with two individuals who are holding him back
from leaping into the water, so fascinated is he
by the song of the miner. Under the drawing-
are the words, "The Song of the Sirens."

If we include among the argonauts all who
traveled by land or voyaged by sea in search of
the golden fleece in the days of '49 we will have
a motley mixture. The tales of the fabulous rich-
ness of the gold fields of California spread rap-
idly throughout the civilized world and drew to
the territory all classes and conditions of men,
the bad as well as the good, the indolent as well
as the industrious, the vicious as well as the
virtuous. They came from Europe, from South
America and from Mexico. From Australia
and Tasmania came the ex-convict and the
ticket-of-leave man; from the isles of the sea
came the Polynesian, and from Asia the Hindoo
and the "Heathen Chinee."

The means of reaching the land of gold were
as varied as the character of the people who
came. Almost every form of vehicle was pressed
into service on land. One individual, if not more,
made the trip trundling his impedimenta in a
wheelbarrow. Others started out in carriages,
intent on making the journey in comfort and
ease, but finished on foot, weary, worn and
ragged. When the great rush came, old sailing
vessels that had long been deemed unseaworthy

were fitted out for the voyage to California. It
must have been the providence that protects
fools which prevented these from going to the
bottom of the ocean. With the desperate
chances that the argonauts took on thes< •
tubs, it is singular that there were so few ship-
wrecks and so little loss of life. Some of these
were such slow sailers that it took them the
greater part of a year to round Cape Horn and
reach their destination. On one of these some
passengers, exasperated at its slowness, landed
near Cape St. Lucas and made the long journey
up the peninsula of Lower California and on to
San Francisco on foot, arriving there a month
before their vessel. Another party undertook to
make the voyage from Nicaragua in a whale
boat and actually did accomplish seven hundred
miles of it before they were picked up in the last
extremities by a sailing vessel.

The Sierra Nevada region, in which gold was
first found, comprised a strip about thirty miles
wide and two hundred miles long from north
to south in the basins of the Feather, Yuba,
Bear, American, Cosumne. Mokolumne, Stanis-
laus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers, between the
elevations of one thousand and five thousand
feet. In all these streams miners washed gold
in 1848. The placer mines on the Upper Sacra-
mento and in the Shasta region were discovered
and worked late in the fall of 1848. The Kla-
math mines were discovered later.

The southern mines, those on the San Joaquin.
Fresno, Kern and San Gabriel rivers, were lo-
cated between 185 1 and 1855. Gold was found
in some of the ravines and creeks of San Diego
county. Practically the gold belt of California
extends from the Mexican line to Oregon, but
at some points it is rather thin. The first gold
digging was clone with butcher knives, the gold
hunter scratching in the sand and crevices of
the rock to find nuggets. Next the gold pan
came into use and the miners became export-

170

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

in twirling the pan in a pool of water, so as to
wash out the sand and gravel and leave the gold
dust in the pan. Isaac Humphreys, who had
mined gold in Georgia, was the first person to
use a rocker or gold cradle in California. Al-
though a very simple piece of machinery those
who reached the mines early found it quite an
expensive one. Dr. Brooks in his diary, under
date of June 1 1, 1848, writes: "On Tuesday we
set to work upon our cradle. We resolved upon
the construction of two and for this purpose
went down to the store in a body to see about
the boards. We found timber extravagantly
dear, being asked $40 a hundred feet. The next
question was as to whether we should hire a
carpenter. We were told there was one or two
in the diggings, who might be hired, though
at a very extravagant rate. Accordingly Brad-
ley and I proceeded to see one of these gentle-
men, and found him washing away with a hollow
log and a willow branch sieve. He offered to
help us at the rate of $35 a day, we finding pro-
visions and tools, and could not be brought to
charge less. We thought this by far too ex-
travagant and left him, determined to undertake
the work ourselves. After two days' work of
seven men they produced two rough cradles
and found that three men with a cradle or rocker
could wash out as much gold in a day as six
could with pans in the same time."

A rocker or gold cradle had some resemblance
to a child's cradle with similar rockers and was
rocked by means of a perpendicular handle
fastened to the cradle box. The cradle box con-
sisted of a wooden trough about twenty inches
wide and forty inches long with sides four or
five inches high. The lower end was left open.
On the upper end sat the hopper, a box twenty
inches square with sides four inches high and
a bottom of sheet iron or zinc pierced with holes
one-half inch in diameter. Where zinc or iron
could not be obtained a sieve of willow rods
was used. Under the hopper was an apron of
canvas, which sloped down from the lower end
of the hopper to the upper end of the cradle
box. A wooden riffle bar an inch square was
nailed across the bottom of the cradle box about
its middle, and another at its lower end. Under
the cradle box were nailed rockers, and near

the middle an upright handle by which motion
was imparted. If water and pay dirt were con-
venient two men were sufficient to operate the
machine. Seated on a stooi or rock the operator
rocked with one hand, while with a long handled
dipper he dipped water from a pool and poured
it on the sand and gravel in the hopper. When
the sand and earth had been washed through
the holes in the sieve the rocks were emptied
and the hopper filled again from the buckets of
pay dirt supplied by the other partner. The gold
was caught on the canvas apron by the riffle
bars, while the thin mud and sand were washed
out of the machine by the water.

In the dry diggings a method of separating
the gold from the earth was resorted to prin-
cipally by Sonorans. The pay dirt was dug and
dried in the sun, then pulverized by pounding
into fine dust. With a batea or bowl-shaped
Indian basket filled with this dust, held in both
hands, the Mexican skillfully tossed the earth
in the air, allowing the wind to blow away the
dust and catching the heavier particles and the
gold in the basket, repeating the process until
there was little left but the gold.

The Long Tom was a single sluice with a
sieve and a box underneath at the end and rif-
fle bars to stop the gold. The pay dirt was shov-
eled in at the upper end and a rapid current of
water washed away the sand and earth, the gold
falling into the receptacle below. Ground sluic-
ing was resorted to where a current of water
from a ditch could be directed against a bank of
earth or hill with a sloping bedrock. The stream
of water washing against the upper side of the
bank caved it down and carried the loose earth
through a string of sluices, depositing the gold
in the riffle bars in the bottom of the sluices.

In the creeks and gulches where there was
not much fall, sluice mining was commonly re-
sorted to. A string of sluice boxes was laid,
each fitting into the upper end of the one below,
and in the lower ones riffle bars were placed
to stop the gold. The sluice boxes were placed
on trestles four feet from the ground and given
an incline of five or six inches to the rod. The
gravel from the bedrock up as far as there was
any pay dirt was shoveled into the upper boxes
and a rapid current of water flowing through the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

boxes carried away the gravel and rocks, the
gold remaining in the riffles. Quicksilver was
placed between the riffles to catch the fine gold.
The gold amalgamated with quicksilver was
cleaned out of the boxes at the end of the day's
work and separated from the quicksilver in a re-
tort. These were the principal methods of mining
used by the argonauts. The machinery and ap-
pliances were simple and inexpensive. Hy-
draulic mining came in later, when larger cap-
ital was required and the mines had fallen into
j the hands of corporations.

When the news spread throughout the states
of the wonderful "finds" of gold in California,
the crudest ideas prevailed in regard to how
the precious metal was to be extracted from
the earth. Gold mining was an almost un-
known industry in the United States. Only
in a few obscure districts of North Caro-
lina and Georgia had gold been found, and
but very few people outside of these dis-
tricts had ever visited the mines. Not one in
ten thousand -of those who joined the rush
to California in 1849 nad ever seen a grain of
virgin gold. The idea prevailed among the gold
seekers that the gold being found in grains it
could be winnowed from the sand and earth in
which it was found like wheat is separated from
chaff. Imbued with this idea Yankee ingenuity
set to work to invent labor-saving machines
that would accomplish the work quickly and
enrich the miner proportionally. The ships that
bore the argonauts from their native land car-
ried out a variety of these gold machines, all
guaranteed to wrest from the most secret re-
cesses the auriferous deposits in nature's
treasure vaults. These machines were of all
varieties and patterns. They were made of cop-
per, iron, zinc and brass. Some were operated
by means of a crank, others had two cranks,
while others were worked with a treadle. Some
required that the operator should stand, others
allowed the miner to sit in an arm chair and
work in comfort.

Haskins, in his "Argonauts of California,"
describes one of these machines that was
brought around the Horn in the ship he came
on: "It was in the shape of a huge fanning
mill, with sieves properly arranged for sorting

171

the gold ready for bottling. All chunk* too
large for the bottle would be consigned to the
pork barrel." (The question of bringing home
the gold in bottles or barrels had been seriousl)
discussed and decided in favor of barrels be-
cause these could be rolled and thus save cost
of transportation from the mines.)

"This immense machine which, during our
passage, excited the envy and jealousy of all
who had not the means and opportunity of se-
curing a similar one required, of course, tin-
services of a hired man to turn the crank, whilst
the proprietor would be busily engaged in shov-
eling in pay dirt and pumping water; the greater
portion of the time, however, being required,
as was firmly believed, in corking the bottles
and fitting the heads in the barrels. This ma-
chine was owned by a Mr. Allen of Cambridge,
Mass., who had brought with him a colored
servant to manage and control the crank por-
tion of the invaluable institution.

"Upon landing we found lying on the sand
and half buried in the mud hundreds of similar
machines, bearing silent witness at once to the
value of our gold saving machines without the
necessity of a trial."

Nor was it the argonaut alone who came by
sea that brought these machines. Some of
these wonderful inventions were hauled across
the plains in wagons, their owners often sacri-
ficing the necessities of life to save the prized
machine. And, when, after infinite toil and trou-
ble, they had landed their prize in the mines,
they were chagrined to find it the subject of jest
and ridicule by those who had some experience
in mining.

The gold rush came early in the history of
California placer mining. The story of a rich
strike would often depopulate a mining camp in
a few hours. Even a bare rumor of rich dig-
gings in some indefinite locality would send
scores of miners tramping off on a wild goose
chase into the mountains. Some of these
rushes originated through fake stories circu-
lated for sinister purpose; others were can-
by exaggerated stories of real discoveries.

One of the most famous fakes of early days
was the Gold Lake rush of 1850. This wonder-
ful lake was supposed to be located about two

172

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

hundred miles northeast of Marysville, on the
divide between the Feather and the Yuba rivers.
The Sacramento Transcript of June 19, 1850,
says: "We are informed by a gentleman from
Marysville that it is currently reported there that
the Indians upon this lake use gold for their
commonest purposes; that they have a ready
way of knocking out square blocks, which they
use for seats and couches upon which to place
their beds, which are simply bundles of wild
oats, which grow so profusely in all sections of
the state. According to report also they use for
fishhooks crooked pieces of gold and kill their
game with arrows made of the same material.
They are reported to be thunderstruck at the
movements of the whites and their eagerness
to collect and hoard the materials of the very
ground upon which they tread.

"A story is current that a man at Gold Lake
saw a large piece of gold floating on the lake
which he succeeded in getting ashore. So
clear are the waters that another man saw a
rock of gold on the bottom. After many ef-
forts he succeeded in lassoing the rock. Three
days afterward he was seen standing holding on
to his rope."

The Placer Times of Marysville reports that
the specimens brought into Marysville are of a
value from $1,500 down. Ten ounces is re-
ported as no unusual yield to the pan. The
first party of sixty which started out under
guidance of one who had returned successful
were assured that they would not get less than
$500 each per' day. We were told that two hun-
dred had left town with a full supply of pro-
visions and four hundred mules. Mules and
horses have doubled in value. Many places of
business are closed. The diggings at the lake
are probably the best ever discovered." The
Times of June 19 says : "It is reported that up
to last Thursday two thousand persons had
taken up their journey. Many who were work-
ing good claims deserted them for the new dis-
covery. Mules and horses were about impos-
sible to obtain. Although the truth of the re-
port rests on the authority of but two or three
who have returned from Gold Lake, yet few
are found who doubt the marvelous revelations.
A party of Kanakas are said to have wintered

at Gold Lake, subsisting chiefly on the flesh of
their animals. They are said to have taken out
$75,000 the first week. When a conviction takes
such complete possession of a whole com-
munity, who are fully conversant with all the
exaggerations that have had their day, it is
scarcely prudent to utter even a qualified dissent
from what is universally believed."

The denouement of the Gold Lake romance
may be found in the Transcript of July 1, 1850.
"The Gold Lake excitement, so much talked of
and acted upon of late, has almost subsided.
A crazy man comes in for a share of the re-
sponsibility. Another report is that they have
found one of the pretended discoverers at
Marysville and are about to lynch him. In-
deed, we are told that a demonstration against
the town is feared by many. People who have
returned after traveling some one hundred and
fifty to two hundred miles say that they left vast
numbers of people roaming between the sources
of the Yuba and the Feather rivers."

Scarcely had the deluded argonauts returned
from a bootless search for the lake of gold when
another rumored discovery of gold fields of
fabulous richness sent them rushing off toward
the sea coast. Now it was Gold Bluff that lured
them away. On the northwest coast of Califor-
nia, near the mouth of the Klamath river,
precipitous bluffs four hundred feet high mark
the coast line of the ocean. A party of pros-
pectors in the fall of 1850, who had been up
in the Del Norte country, were making their
way down to the little trading and trapping sta-
tion of Trinidad to procure provisions. On
reaching the bluffs, thirty miles above Trinidad,
they were astonished to find stretching out be-
fore them a beach glittering with golden sands.
They could not stop to gather gold; they were
starving. So, scraping up a few handfuls of the
glittering sands, they hastened on. In due
time they reached San Francisco, where they
exhibited their sand, which proved to be nearly
half gold. The report of the wonderful find was
spread by the newspapers and the excitement
began. Companies were formed and claims lo-
cated at long range. One company of nine
locators sent an expert to examine their claims.
He, by a careful mathematical calculation, as-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

certainecl that the claim would yield forty-three
million dollars to each partner. As there were
fifteen miles of gold beach, the amount of gold
in the sands was sufficient- to demonetize the
precious metal. A laudable desire to benefit
the human race possessed some of the claim
owners. They formed joint stock companies with
shares at $100 each. Gold Bluff mining stock
went off like the proverbial hot cakes and pros-
pectors went off as rapidly. Within two days
after the expert's wonderful story was spread
abroad nine ships were fitted out for Gold Bluff.
The first to arrive off the Bluff was the vessel
containing a party of the original discoverers.
In attempting to land in a boat, the boat was
upset in the breakers and five of the six occu-
pants were drowned, Bertram, the leader of the
party making the discovery, alone escaping.
The vessel put back to Trinidad and the gold
hunters made their way up the coast to the
Bluff. But alas for their golden dreams!
Where they had hoped to gather gold by the
ship load no gold was found. Old ocean had
gathered it back into his treasure vaults.

The bubble burst as suddenly as it had ex-

: panded. And yet there was gold at Gold Bluff
and there is gold there yet. If the ocean could

' be drained or coffer dammed for two hundred
miles along the gold coast of northern Califor-
nia and Oregon, all the wealth of Alaska would
be but the panning out of a prospect hole com-
pared to the richness that lies hidden in the
sands of Gold Beach. For years after the
bursting of the Gold Bluff bubble, when the
tide was low, the sands along Gold Beach were
mined with profit.

The Kern river excitement in the spring of
1855 surpassed everything that had preceded it.
Seven years of mining had skimmed the rich-
ness of the placers. The northern and central
gold fields of California had been thoroughly
prospected. The miners who had been accus-
tomed to the rich strikes of early years could
not content themselves with moderate returns.
They were on the qui vive for a rich strike and
ready for a rush upon the first report of one.
The first discoveries on the Kern river were
made in the summer of 1854, but no excitement

i followed immediately. During the fall and win-

ter rumors were set afloat of rich strike* on the
head waters of that stream. The stories h'nw
as they traveled. One that had a wide circula-
tion and was readily accepted ran about as fol-
lows: "A Mexican doctor had appeared in Mari-
posa loaded down with gold nuggets. He re-
ported that he and four companions had found
a region paved with gold. The very hills were
yellow with outcroppings. While gloating over
their wealth and loading it into sacks the In-
dians attacked them and killed his four com-
panions. He escaped with one sack of gold. I le
proposed to organize a company large enough
to exterminate the Indians and then bring OUt
the gold on pack mules." This as well as other
stories as improbable were spread broadcast
throughout the state. Many of the reports of
wonderful strikes were purposely magnified by
merchants and dealers in mining supplies who
were overstocked with unsalable goods; and
by transportation companies with whom busi-
ness was slack. Their purpose was accom-
plished and the rush was on. It began in Jan-
uary, 1855. ' Every steamer down the coast to
Los Angeles was loaded to the guards with
adventurers for the mines. The sleepy old
metropolis of the cow counties waked up to
find itself suddenly transformed into a bustling
mining camp. The Southern Calif ornian of Feb-
ruary 8, 1855, thus describes the situation: "The
road from our valley is literally thronged with
people on their way to the mines. Hundreds
of people have been leaving not only the city,
but every portion of the county. Every descrip-
tion of vehicle and animal has been brought
into requisition to take the exultant seekers
after wealth to the goal of their hopes. Im-
mense ten-mule wagons strung out one after
another; long trains of pack mules and men
mounted and on foot, with picks and shovels:
boarding-house keepers with their tents; mer-
chants with their stocks of miners' necessaries
and gamblers with their 'papers' are constantly
leaving for the Kern river mines. The wildest
stories are afloat. If the mines turn out $10
a day to the man everybody ought to be satis-
fied. The opening of these mines has been a
Godsend to all of us, as the business of the en-
tire country was on the point of taking to a

174

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tree. The great scarcity of money is seen in
the present exorbitant rates of interest which it
commands; 8, 10 and even 15 per cent a month
is freely paid and the supply even at these rates
is too meager to meet the demands." As the
rush increased our editor grows more jubilant.
In his issue of March 7, he throws out these
headlines: "Stop the Press! Glorious News
from Kern River! Bring Out the Big Gun!
There are a thousand gulches rich with gold
and room for ten thousand miners. Miners
averaged $50 a day. One man with his own
hands took out $160 in a day. Five men in ten
days took out $4,500."

Another stream of miners and adventurers
was pouring into the mines by way of the San
Joaquin valley. From Stockton to the Kern
river, a distance of three hundred miles, the
road was crowded with men on foot, on stages,
on horseback and on every form of convey-
ance that would take them to the new El Do-
rado. In four months five or six thousand men
had found their way into the Kern river basin.
There was gold there, but not enough to go
around. A few struck it rich, the many struck
nothing but "hard luck" and the rush out began.
Those who had ridden into the valley footed it
out, and those who had footed it in on sole
leather footed it out on their natural soles.

After the wild frenzy of Kern river, the press
of the state congratulated the public with the
assurance that the era of wild rushes was past —
"what had been lost in money had been gained
in experience." As if prospectors ever profited
by experience! Scarcely had the victims of Kern
river resumed work in the old creeks and canons
they had deserted to join in the rush when a
rumor came, faint at first, but gathering
strength at each repetition, that rich diggings
had been struck in the far north. This time
it is Frazer river. True, Frazer river is in the
British possessions, but what of that? There
are enough miners in California to seize the
country and hold it until the cream of the mines
has been skimmed. Rumors of the richness
of mines increased with every arrival of a
steamer from the north. Captains, pursers,
mates, cooks and waiters all confirmed the sto-
ries of rich strikes. Doubters asserted that the

dust and nuggets exhibited had made the trip
from San Francisco to Victoria and back. But
they were silenced by the assurance that the
transportation company was preparing to double
the number of its vessels on that route. Com-
modore Wright was too smart to run his steam-
ers on fake reports, and thus the very thing that
should have caused suspicion was used to con-
firm the truth of the rumors. The doubters
doubted no more, but packed their outfits for
Frazer river. California was played out. Where
could an honest miner pan out $100 a day
in California now? He could do it every day
in Frazer; the papers said so. The first notice
of the mines was published in March, 1858. The
rush began the latter part of April and in four
months thirty thousand men, one-sixth of the
voting population of the state, had rushed to
the mines.

The effect of the craze was disastrous to busi-
ness in California. Farms were abandoned and
crops lost for want of hands to harvest them.
Rich claims in old diggings were sold for a trifle
of their value. Lots on Montgomery street that
a few years later were worth $1,500 a front foot
were sold for $100. Real estate in the interior
towns was sacrificed at 50 to 75 per cent less
than it was worth before the rush began. But
a halt was called in the mad rush. The returns
were not coming in satisfactorily. By the mid-
dle of July less than $100,000 in dust had
reached San Francisco, only about $3 for each
man who had gone to the diggings. There was
gold there and plenty of it, so those interested
in keeping up the excitement said: "The Frazer
river is high; wait till it subsides." But it did
not subside, and it has not subsided since. If
the Frazer did not subside the excitement did,
and that suddenly. Those who had money
enough or could borrow from their friends got
away at once. Those who had none hung
around Victoria and New Westminster until
they were shipped back at the government's ex-
pense. The Frazer river craze was the last of the
mad, unreasoning "gold rushes." The Washoe
excitement of '59 and the "Ho! for Idaho of
1863-64" had some of the characteristics of the
early gold rushes, but they soon settled down to
steady business and the yield from these fairly

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

17;>

recompensed those who were frugal and indus-
trious.

Never before perhaps among civilized people
was there witnessed such a universal leveling
as occurred in the first years of the mining ex-
citement in California. "As the labor required
was physical instead of mental, the usual supe-
riority of head workers over hand workers dis-
appeared entirely. Men who had been gov-
ernors and legislators and judges in the old
states worked by the side of outlaws and con-
victs; scholars and students by the side of men
who could not read or write; those who had
been masters by the side of those who had been
slaves; old social distinctions were obliterated;
everybody did business on his own account, and
not one man in ten was the employe and much
less the servant of another. Social distinctions
appeared to be entirely obliterated and no man
was considered inferior to another. The hard-
fisted, unshaven and patch-covered miner was
on terms of perfect equality with the well-
dressed lawyer, surgeon or merchant; and in
general conferences, discussions and even con-

versations the most weather-beaten and strongly
marked face, or, in oilier words, the man who
had seen and experienced the most, notwith-
standing his wild and tattered attire, was lis-
tened to with more attention and respectful con-
sideration than the man of polished speech and
striking antithesis. One reason of this was that in
those days the roughest-looking man not infre-
quently knew more than anybody else of what
was wanted to be known, and the raggedest man
not infrequently was the most influential and
sometimes the richest man in the locality."*

This independent spirit was characteristic of
the men of '48 and '49. Then nearly everybody
was honest and theft was almost unknown.
With the advent of the criminal element in
1850 and later there came a change. • Before that
a pan of gold dust could be left in an open tent
unguarded, but with the coming of the Sydney
ducks from Australia and men of their class it
became necessary to guard property with sedu-
lous care.

* Hittell's History of California, Vol. III.

CHAPTER XXVI.

SAN FRANCISCO.

IN 1835 Capt. William A. Richardson built
the first house on the Yerba Buena cove.
It was a shanty of rough board, which he
replaced a year later with an adobe building.
He was granted a lot in 1836 and his building
stood near what is now the corner of Dupont
and Clay streets. Richardson had settled at
Sausalito in 1822. He was an Englishman by
birth and was one of the first foreigners to settle
in California.

Jacob P. Leese, an American, in partnership
with Spear & Hinckley, obtained a lot in 1836
and built a house and store near that of Captain
Richardson. There is a tradition that Mr. Leese
began his store building on the first of July and
finished it at ten o'clock on the morning of
July 4, and for a house warming celebrated the
glorious Fourth in a style that astonished the
natives up and down the coast. The house was
sixty feet long and twenty-five broad, and, if

completed in three days, Mr. Leese certainly de
serves the credit of having eclipsed some of
the remarkable feats in house building that were
performed after the great fires of San Francisco
in the early '50s. Mr. Leese and his neighbor.
Captain Richardson, invited all the high-toned
Spanish families for a hundred miles around to
the celebration. The Mexican and American
flags floated over the building and two six-
pounders fired salutes. At five o'clock the
guests sat down to a sumptuous dinner which
lasted, toasts and all, till 10 o'clock, and then
came dancing; and, as Mr. Leese remarks in his
diary : "Our Fourth ended on the evening :'
the. fifth." Mr. Leese was an energetic person.
He built a house in three days, gave a Fourth of
July celebration that lasted two days, and insidr
of a week had a store opened and was doing a
thriving business with his late guests. He foil
in love with the same energy that he did busi-

17(5

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ness. Among the guests at his 4th of July
celebration were the Vallejos, the nabobs of
Sonoma. Leese courted one of the girls and in
a few months after the celebration married her.
Their daughter, Rosalie Leese, was the first
child born in Yerba Buena. Such was the be-
ginning of San Francisco.

This settlement was on a crescent-shaped cove
that lay between Clark's Point and the Rincon.
The locality was known as Yerba Buena (good
herb), a species of mint to which the native Cal-
ifornians attributed many medicinal virtues.
The peninsula still bore the name that had been
applied to it when the mission and presidio
were founded, San Francisco. Yerba Buena
was a local appellation and applied only to the
little hamlet that had grown up on the cove.
This settlement, although under the Mexican
government, was not a Mexican town. The
foreign element, the American predominating,
had always been in the ascendency. At the time
of the conquest, among its two hundred inhab-
itants, were representatives of almost every civ-
ilized nation on the globe. It was a cosmopol-
itan town. In a very short time after the con-
quest it began to take on a new growth and was
recognized as the coming metropolis of Califor-
nia. The curving beach of the cove at one
point (Jackson street) crossed the present line
of Montgomery street.

Richardson and Leese had built their stores
and warehouses back from the beach because of
a Mexican law that prohibited the building of a
house on the beach where no custom house ex-
isted. All houses had to be built back a certain
number of varas from high-water mark. This
regulation was made to prevent smuggling. Be-
tween the shore line of the cove and anchorage
there was a long stretch of shallow water. This
made transportation of goods from ship to
shore very inconvenient and expensive. With
the advent of the Americans and the inaugura-
tion of a more progressive era it became neces-
sary for the convenient landing of ships and for
the discharging and receiving of their cargoes
that the beach front of the town should be im-
proved by building wharves and docks. The dif-
ficulty was to find the means to do this. The
general government of the United States could

not undertake it. The war with Mexico was
still in progress. The only available way was
to sell off beach lots to private parties, but who
was to give title was the question. Edwin Bry-
ant, February 22, 1847, na-d succeeded Wash-
ington Bartlett as alcalde. Bryant was a pro-
gressive man, and, recognizing the necessity of
improvement in the shipping facilities of the
town, he urged General Kearny, the acting
governor, to relinquish, on the part of the gen-
eral government, its claim to the beach lands in
front of the town in favor of the municipality
under certain conditions. General Kearny
really had no authority to relinquish the claim
of the general government to the land, for the
simple reason that the general government had
not perfected a claim. The country was held
as conquered territory. Mexico had made no
concession of the land by treaty. It was not
certain that California would be ceded to the
United States. Under Mexican law the gov-
ernor of the territory, under certain conditions,
had the right to make grants, and General Kear-
ny, assuming the power given a Mexican gov-
ernor, issued the following decree: "I, Brig-
Gen. S. W. Kearny, Governor of California,
by virtue of authority in me vested by the Pres-
ident of the United States of America, do hereby
grant, convey, and release unto the Town of San
Francisco, the people or corporate authorities
thereof, all the right, title and interest of the
Government of the United States and of the
Territory of California in and to the Beach and
Water Lots on the East front of said Town of
San Francisco included between the points
known as the Rincon and Fort Montgomery,
excepting such lots as may be selected for the
use of the United States Government by the
senior officers of the army and navy now there;
provided, the said ground hereby ceded shall
be divided into lots and sold by public auction to
the highest bidder, after three months' notice
previously given; the proceeds of said sale to
be for the benefit of the town of San Francisco.
Given at Monterey, capital of California, this
10th day of March, 1847, and the seventy-first
year of the independence of the United States."

S. W. Kearny,
Brig.-Gen'l & Gov. of California.

HISTORICAL AND

BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

177

In pursuance of this decree, Alcalde Bryant
advertised in the Californian that the ground
described in the decree, known as Water Lots,
would be surveyed and divided into convenient
building lots and sold to the highest bidder on
the 29th of June (1847). He then proceeds in
the advertisement to boom the town. "The site
of the town of San Francisco is known by all
navigators and mercantile men acquainted with
the subject to be the most commanding com-
mercial position on the entire western coast of
the Pacific ocean, and the Town itself is no
doubt destined to become the commercial em-
porium of the western side of the North Ameri-
can continent.-' The alcaldes' assertions must
have seemed rather extravagant to the dwellers
in the little burgh on the cove of Yerba Buena.
But Bryant was a far-seeing man and proved
himself in this instance to be a prophet.

It will be noticed that both General Kearny
and Alcalde Bryant call the town San Francisco.
Alcalde Bartlett, the predecessor in office of
< Alcalde Bryant, had changed its name just be-
fore he was recalled to his ship. He did not
like the name Yerba Buena, so he summarily
changed it. He issued a proclamation setting
forth that hereafter the town should be known
as San Francisco. Plaving proclaimed a change
of name, he proceeded to give his reasons:
Yerba Buena was a paltry cognomen for a cer-
tain kind of mint found on an island in the
j bay; it was a merely local name, unknown be-
vond the district, while San Francisco had long
been familiar on the maps. "Therefore it is
hereby ordained, etc." Bartlett builded better
than he knew. It would have been a sad mis-
take for the city to have carried the "outlandish
name which Americans would mangle in pro-
nouncing," as the alcalde said.

The change was made in the latter part of
January, 1847, but it was some time before the
new name was generally adopted.

The California Star, Sam Brannan's paper,
which had begun to shine January 9, 1847, m
its issue of March 20, alluding to the change,
says: "We acquiesce in it, though we prefer
the old name. When the change was first at-
tempted we viewed it as a mere assumption of
authority, without law of precedent, and there-
1 12

fore we adhered to the old name — Yerba
Buena."

"It was asserted by the late alcalde, Washing-
ton Bartlett, that the place was called San
Francisco in some old Spanish paper which he
professed to have in his possession; but how
could we believe a man even about that which 1
it is said 'there is nothing in it,' who had so
often evinced a total disregard lor his own honor
and character and the honor of the country
which gave him birth and the rights of his fel-
low citizens in the district?" Evidently the edi-
tor had a grievance and was anxious to get even
with the alcalde. Bartlett demanded an inves-
tigation of some charges made against his ad-
ministration. He was cleared of all blame. He
deserves the thanks of all Californians in sum-
marily suppressing Yerba Buena and preventing
it from being fastened on the chief city of t he-
state.

There was at that time (on paper) a city of
Francisca. The city fathers of this budding me-
tropolis were T. O. Larkin and Robert Semple.
In a half-column advertisement in the Califor-
nian of April 20, 1847, and several subsequent
issues, headed "Great Sale of City Lots," they set
forth the many advantages and merits of
Francisca. The streets are eighty feet wide, the
alleys twenty feet wide, and the lots fifty yards
front and forty yards back. The whole city
comprises five square miles."

"Francisca is situated on the Straits of Car-
quinez, on the north side of the Bay of San
Francisco, about thirty miles from the month
of the bay and at the head of ship navigation.
In front of the city is a commodious bay, large
enough for two hundred ships to ride at anchor,
safe from any wind." * * * "The entire
trade of the great Sacramento and San Joaquin
valleys, a fertile country of great width and m ar
seven hundred miles long from north to south,
must of necessity pass through the narrow chan-
nel of Carquinez and the bay and country 1^
so situated that every person who passes from
one side of the bay to the other will find the
nearest and best way by Francisca." Francisca,
with its manifold natural advantages, ought to
have been a great city, the metropolis of Cali-
fornia, but the Fates were against it. Alcalde

178

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Bartlett, probably without any design of doing
so, dealt it a fearful blow when he dubbed the
town of the good herb, San Francisco. Two
cities with names so nearly alike could not live
and thrive in the same state. Francisca became
Benicia. The population of San Francisco (or
Yerba Buena, as it was then called) at the time
that Captain Montgomery raised the stars and
stripes and took possession of it probably did
not exceed two hundred. Its change of masters
accelerated its growth. The Calif omian of Sep-
tember 4, 1847 (fourteen months after it came
under the flag of the United States), gives the
following statistics of its population and prog-
ress: Total white male population, 247; female,
123; Indians, male, 26; female, 8; South Sea
Islanders, male, 39; female 1; negroes, male,
9; female 1; total population, 454.

Nearly every country on the globe had repre-
sentatives in its population, and the various vo-
cations by which men earn a living were
well represented. Minister, one; doctors, three;
lawyers, three; surveyors, two; agriculturists,
eleven; bakers, seven; blacksmiths, six; brew-
er, one; butchers, seven; cabinetmakers, two;
carpenters, twenty-six; cigarmaker, one; coop-
ers, three; clerks, thirteen; gardener, one;
grocers, five; gunsmiths, two; hotel-keepers,
three; laborers, twenty; masons, four; mer-
chants, eleven; miner, one; morocco case
maker, one; navigators (inland), six; navigator
(ocean), one; painter, one; printer, one; sol-
dier, one; shoemakers, four; silversmith, one;
tailors, four; tanners, two; watchmaker, one;
weaver, one. Previous to April 1, 1847, accord-
ing to the Calif omian, there had been erected in
the town seventy-nine buildings, classified as
follows: Shanties, twenty-two; frame buildings,
thirty-one; adobe buildings, twenty-six. Since
April 1, seventy-eight buildings have been
erected, viz. : Shanties, twenty; frame buildings,
forty-seven; adobe buildings, eleven. "Within
five months last past," triumphantly adds the
editor of the Calif omian, "as many buildings
have been built as were erected in all the pre-
vious years of the town's existence."

The town continued to grow with wonderful
rapidity throughout the year 1847, considering
that peace had not yet been declared and the

destiny of California was uncertain. According
to a school census taken in March, 1848, by
the Board of Trustees, the population was:
Males, five hundred and seventy-five; females,
one hundred and seventy-seven; and "children
of age to attend school," sixty, a total of eight
hundred and twelve. Building kept pace with
the increase of population until the "gold fever"
became epidemic. Dr. Brooks, writing in his
diary May 17, says: "Walking through the town
to-day, I observed that laborers were employed
only upon about half a dozen of the fifty new
buildings which were in the course of being
run up."

The first survey of lots in the town had been
made by a Frenchman named Vioget. No
names had been given to the streets. This sur-
vey was made before the conquest. In 1847,
Jasper O'Farrell surveyed and platted the dis-
trict extending about half a mile in the different
directions from the plaza. The streets were
named, and, with a very few changes, still retain
the names then given. In September the coun-
cil appointed a committee to report upon the
building of a wharf. It was decided to con-
struct two wharves, one from the foot of Clay
street and the other from the foot of Broadway.
Money was appropriated to build them and they
had been extended some distance seaward when
the rush to the mines suspended operations.
After considerable agitation by the two news-
papers and canvassing for funds, the first school-
house was built. It was completed December
4, 1847, tmt, for lack of funds, or, as the Star
says, for lack of energy in the council, school
was not opened on the completion of the house.
In March the council appropriated $400 and
April 1, 1848, Thomas Douglas, a graduate of
Yale College, took charge of the school. San
Francisco was rapidly developing into a pro-
gressive American city. Unlike the older towns
of California, it had but a small Mexican popu-
lation. Even had not gold been discovered, it
would have grown into a commercial city of con-
siderable size.

The first effect of the gold discovery and the
consequent rush to the mines was to bring
everything to a standstill. As Kemble, of the
Star, puts it, it was "as if a curse had arrested

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

17'J

our onward course of enterprise; everything
wears a desolate and sombre look; everywhere
all is dull, monotonous, dead." The return of
the inhabitants in a few months and the influx
of new arrivals gave the town a boom in the
fall of 1848. Building was only limited by the
lack of material, and every kind of a makeshift
was resorted to to provide shelter against win-
ter rains. From the many attempts at describ-
ing the town at this stage of its development, I
select this from "Sights in the Gold Regions," a
book long since out of print. Its author, T. T.
Johnson, arrived at San Francisco April 1, 1849.
"Proceeding on our survey, we found the
streets, or, properly, the roads, laid out reg-
ularly, those parallel with the water being a
succession of terraces, and these ascending the
hills or along their sides being in some instances
cut down ten or twelve feet below the surface.
Except a portion of the streets fronting upon
the cove, they are all of hard-beaten, sandy clay,
as solid as if macadamized. About three hun-
dred houses, stores, shanties and sheds, with a
great many tents, composed the town at that
period. The houses were mostly built of rough
boards and unpainted ; brown cottons or calico
nailed against the beams and joists answered for
wall and ceiling of the better class of tenements.
With the exception of the brick warehouse of
Howard and Melius, the establishments of the
commercial houses of which we had heard so
much were inferior to the outhouses of the
country seats on the Hudson; and yet it would
puzzle the New York Exchange to produce
merchant princes of equal importance." * * *
"We strolled among the tents in the outskirts
of the town. Here was 'confusion worse con-
founded,' chiefly among Mexicans, Peruvians
and Chilians. Every kind, size, color and shape
of tent pitched helter-skelter and in the most
awkward manner were stowed full of everything
under the sun."

In the first six months of 1849 fifteen thou-
sand souls were added to the population of San
Francisco; in the latter half of that year about
four thousand arrived every month by sea alone.
At first the immigrants were from Mexico,
Chile, Peru and the South American ports gen-
erally; but early in the spring the Americans

began to arrive, coming by way of Panama and
Cape Horn, and later across the plains. Kuropc
sent its contingent by sea via Cape Horn; and
China, Australia and the Hawaiian Islands
added to the city's population an undesirable
element. A large majority of those who came
by sea made their way to the mines, but many
soon returned to San Francisco, sonic to take
th eir departure for home, others to become resi-
dents. At the end of the year San Frartdsco
had a population of twenty-five thousand. The
following graphic description of life in San
Francisco in the fall of '49 and spring of '50 I take
from a paper, "Pioneer Days in San Francisco,"
written by John Williamson Palmer, and pub-
lished in the Century Magazine (1890): "And
how did they all live? In frame houses of one
story, more commonly in board shanties and
canvas tents, pitched in the midst of sand or
mud and various rubbish and strange filth and
fleas; and they slept on rude cots or on soft
planks, under horse blankets, on tables, coun-
ters, floors, on trucks in the open air, in bunk*,
braced against the weather-boarding, f.>ri\ oi
them in one loft; and so they tossed and
scratched and swore and laughed and sang and
skylarked, those who were not tired or drunk
enough to sleep. And in the working hours
they bustled, and jostled, and tugged, and
sweated, and made money, always made money.
They labored and they lugged; they worked on
lighters, drove trucks, packed mules, rang bells,
carried messages, 'waited' in restaurants,
'marked' for billiard tables, served drinks in
bar rooms, 'faked' on the plaza, 'cried' at auc-
tions, toted lumber for houses, ran a game of
faro or roulette in the El Dorado or the P>ella
Union, or manipulated three-card monte on
the head of a barrel in front of the Parker
House; they speculated, and, as a rule, gam-
bled.

"Clerks in stores and offices had munificent
salaries. Five dollars a day was about the small-
est stipend even in the custom house, and one
Baptist preacher was paid $10,000 a year. La-
borers received $1 an hour; a pick or a shovel
was worth $10; a tin pan or a wooden bowl
$5. and a butcher knife $30. At one time car-
penters who were getting $12 a day struck

180

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

for $16. Lumber rose to $500 per thou-
sand feet, and every brick in a house cost
a dollar one way or another. Wheat, flour
and salt pork sold at $40 a barrel; a small
loaf of bread was fifty cents and a hard-boiled
egg a dollar. You paid $3 to get into the cir-
cus and $55 for a private box at the theater.
Forty dollars was the price for ordinary coarse
boots, and a pair that came above the knees
and would carry you gallantly through the quag-
mires brought a round hundred. When a shirt
became very dirty the wearer threw it away and
bought a new one. Washing cost $15 a dozen
in 1849.

"Rents were simply monstrous; $3,000 a
month in advance for a 'store' hurriedly built of
rough boards. Wright & Co. paid $75,000 for
the wretched little place on the corner of the
plaza that they called the Miners' Bank, and
$36,000 was asked for the use of the Old Adobe
as a custom-house. The Parker House paid
$120,000 a year in rents, nearly one-half of that
amount being collected from gamblers who held
the second floor; and the canvas tent next door
used as a gambling saloon, and called the El
Dorado, was good for $40,000 a year. From
10 to 15 per cent a month was paid in advance
for the use of money borrowed on substantial
security. The prices of real estate went up
among the stars; $8,000 for a fifty-vara lot that
had been bought in 1849 f°r $20- A lot pur-
chased two years before for a barrel of aguar-
diente sold for $18,000. Yet, for all that, every-
body made money.

"The aspect of the streets of San Francisco at
this time was such as one may imagine of an
unsightly waste of sand and mud churned by
the continual grinding of heavy wagons and
trucks and the tugging and floundering of
horses, mules and oxen; thoroughfares irregu-
lar and uneven, ungraded, unpaved, unplanked,
obstructed by lumber and goods, alternate
liumps and holes, the actual dumping-places of
the town, handy receptacles for the general
sweepings and rubbish and indescribable offal
and filth, the refuse of an indiscriminate popu-
lation 'pigging' together in shanties and tents.
And these conditions extended beyond the
actual settlement into the chaparral and under-

brush that covered the sand hills on the north

and west.

"The flooding rains of winter transformed
what should have been thoroughfares into
treacherous quagmires set with holes and traps
fit to smother horse and man. Loads of brush-
wood and branches of trees cut from the hills
were thrown into these swamps; but they served
no more than a temporary purpose and the in-
mates of tents and houses made such bridges
and crossings as they could with boards, boxes
and barrels. Men waded through the slough
and thought themselves lucky when they sank
no deeper than their waists."

It is said that two horses mired down in the
mud of Montgomery street were left to die of
starvation, and that three drunken men were
suffocated between Washington and Jackson
streets. It was during the winter of '49 that the
famous sidewalk of flour sacks, cooking stoves
and tobacco boxes was built. It extended from
Simmons, Hutchinson & Co.'s store to Adams
Express office, a distance of about seventy-five
yards. The first portion was built of Chilean
flour in one hundred pound sacks, next came the
cooking stoves in a long row, and then followed
a double row of tobacco boxes of large size,
and a yawning gap of the walk was bridged by
a piano. Chile flour, cooking stoves, tobacco
and pianos were cheaper material for building
walks, owing to the excessive supply of these,
than lumber at $600 a thousand.

In the summer of '49 there were more than
three hundred sailing vessels lying in the harbor
of San Francisco, from which the sailors had
deserted to go to the mines. Some of these ves-
sels rotted where they were moored. Some
were hauled up in the sand or mud flats and
used for store houses, lodging houses and sa-
loons. As the water lots were filled in and built
upon, these ships sometimes formed part of
the line of buildings on the street. The brig
Euphemia was the first jail owned by the city;
the store ship Apollo was converted into a
lodging house and saloon, and the Niantic Hotel
at the corner of Sansome and Clay streets was
built on the hull of the ship Niantic. As the
wharves were extended out into the bay the
space between was filled in from the sand hills

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and houses built along the wharves. In this
way the cove was gradually filled in. The high
price of lumber and the great scarcity of houses
brought about the importation from New York,
Boston, Philadelphia and London of houses
ready framed to set up. For a time im-
mense profits were made in this, but an ex-
cessive shipment like that of the articles of
which the famous sidewalk was made brought
down the price below cost, and the business
ceased.

The first of the great fires that devastated San
Francisco occurred on Christmas eve, 1849. ^
started in Denison's Exchange, a gambling
house on the east side of the plaza. It burned
the greater part of the block between Wash-
ington and Clay streets and Kearny and Mont-
gomery streets. The loss was estimated at a
million and a quarter dollars. The second great
fire occurred on May 4, 1850. It burned over
the three blocks between Montgomery and
Dupont streets, bounded by Jackson and Clay
streets, and the north and east sides of Ports-
mouth square. The loss was estimated at
$4,000,000. It started in the United States Ex-
change, a gambling den, at four o'clock in the
morning, and burned for seven hours. The fire
was believed to be of incendiary origin and sev-
eral suspicious characters were arrested, but
nothing could be proved against them. A num-
ber of the lookers-on refused to assist in arrest-
ing the progress of the flames unless paid for
their labor ; and $3 an hour was demanded and
paid to some who did.

On the 14th of June, 1S50, a fire broke out in
the Sacramento House, on the east side of Kear-
ny street, between Clay and Sacramento. The
entire district from Kearny street between Clay
and California to the water front was burned
over, causing a loss of $3,000,000. Over three
hundred houses were destroyed. The fourth
great fire of the fateful year of 1850 occurred
September 17. It started on Jackson street and
destroyed the greater part of the blocks be-
tween Dupont and Montgomery streets from
Washington to Pacific streets. The loss in this
was not so great from the fact that the district
contained mostly one-story houses. It was esti-
mated at half a million dollars. December 14

of the same year a fire occurred on Sacramento
street below Montgomery. Although the dis-
trict burned over was not extensive, the loss
was heavy. The buildings were of corrugated
iron, supposed to be fireproof, and were filled
with valuable merchandise. The loss amounted
to $1,000,000. After each fire, building was re-
sumed almost before the embers of the fire that
consumed the former buildings were extin-
guished. After each fire better buildings wer<
constructed. A period of six months' exemp
tion had encouraged the inhabitants of the fire
afflicted city to believe that on account of the
better class of buildings constructed the danger
of great conflagrations was past, but the worst
was yet to come. At 11 p. m. May 3, 1S51. a
fire, started by incendiaries, broke out on the
south side of the plaza. A strong nortlnw M
wind swept across Kearny street in broad
sheets of flame, first southeastward, then, tin
wind changing, the flames veered to the north
and east. All efforts to arrest them were use
less; houses were blown up and torn down in
attempts to cut off communication, but the en-
gines were driven back step by step, while some
of the brave firemen fell victims to the fire fiend
The flames, rising aloft in whirling volume-,
swept away the frame houses and crumbled up
with intense heat the supposed fireproof struc-
tures. After ten hours, when the fire abated for
want of material to burn, all that remained of
the city were the sparsely settled outskirts. All
of the business district between Pine and Pa-
cific streets, from Kearny to the Hattcry on
the water front, was in ruins. Over one thou-
sand houses had been burned. The loss of prop-
erty was estimated at $10,000,000, an amount
greater than the aggregate of all the preceding
fires. A number of lives were lost. During the
progress of the fire large quantities of goods
were stolen by bands of thieves. The sixth and
last of the great conflagrations that devastated
the city occurred on the 22d of June, 185 1 . The
fire started in a building on Powell street and
ravaged the district between Clay and Broadway,
from Powell to Sansome. Four hundred and
fifty houses were burned, involving a loss of
$2,500,000. An improved fire department,
more stringent building regulations and a bet-

182

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ter water supply combined to put an end to the
era of great fires.

After the great fires of 185 1 had swept over
the city there was practically nothing left of
the old metropolis of the early gold rush. The
hastily constructed wooden shanties were gone;
the corrugated iron building imported from
New York and London, and warranted to be
fireproof, had proved to be worthless to with-
stand great heat; the historic buildings had dis-
appeared; the new city that, Phcenix-like, arose
from the ashes of the old was a very different
city from its predecessor that had been wiped
from the earth by successive conflagrations.
Stone and brick buildings covered the former
site of wooden structures. The unsightly mud
flats between the wharves were filled in from the
sand hills and some of the streets paved. The
year 1853 was memorable for the rapid progress
of the city. Assessed property values increased
from $18,000,000 to $28,000,000. Real estate
values went soaring upward and the city was on
the high tide of prosperity; but a reaction came
in 1855. The rush to the mines had ceased, im-
migration had fallen off, and men had begun to
retrench and settle down to steady business
habits. Home productions had replaced im-
ports, and the people were abandoning mining
for farms. The transition from gold mining to
grain growing had begun. All these affected
the city and real estate declined. Lots that sold
for $8,000 to $10,000 in 1853 could be bought
for half that amount in 1855. Out of one thou-
sand business houses, three hundred were va-
cant. Another influence that helped to bring
about a depression was the growing political

corruption and the increased taxation from pec-
ulations of dishonest officials.

The defalcations and forgeries of Harry
Meigs, which occurred in 1854, were a terrible
blow to the city. Meigs was one of its most
trusted citizens. He was regarded as the em-
bodiment of integrity, the stern, incorruptible
man, the watch-dog of the treasury. By his
upright conduct he had earned the sobriquet of
Honest Harry Meigs. Over-speculation and
reaction from the boom of 1853 embarrassed
him. He forged a large amount of city scrip
and hypothecated it to raise money. His forger-
ies were suspected, but before the truth was
known he made his escape on the barque
America to Costa Rica and from there he made
his way to Peru. His forgeries amounted to
$1,500,000, of which $1,000,000 was in comp-
troller's warrants, to which he forged the names
of Mayor Garrison and Controller Harris. The
vigilance committee of 1856 cleared the political
atmosphere by clearing the city, by means of
hemp and deportation, of a number of bad
characters. The city was just beginning to re-
gain its former prosperity when the Frazer river
excitement brought about a temporary depres-
sion. The wild rush carried away about one-
sixth of its population. These all came back
again, poorer and perhaps wiser; at least, their
necessities compelled them to go to work and
weaned them somewhat of their extravagant
habits and their disinclination to work except for
the large returns of earlier days. Since 1857 the
growth of the city has been steady, unmarked
by real estate booms; nor has it been retarded
by long periods of financial depression.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CRIME, CRIMINALS AND

THERE was but little crime in California
among its white inhabitants during the
Spanish and Mexican eras of its history.
The conditions were not conducive to the de-
velopment of a criminal element. The inhabit-
ants were a pastoral people, pursuing an out-
door vocation, and there were no large towns
or cities where the viciously inclined could con-

VIGILANCE COMMITTEES.

gregate and find a place of refuge from justice.
"FYom 1819 to 1846, that is, during the entire
period of Mexican domination under the Repub-
lic," says Bancroft, "there were but six murders
among the whites in all California." There were
no lynchings, no mobs, unless some of the rev-
olutionary uprisings might be called such, and
but one vigilance committee.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

In; j

San Francisco is credited with the origin of
that form of popular tribunal known as the vigi-
lance committee. The name "vigilance com-
mittee" originated with the uprising, in 185 1, of
the people of that city against the criminal ele-
ment; but, years before there was a city of San
Francisco, Los Angeles had originated a tri-
bunal of the people, had taken criminals from
the lawfully constituted authorities and had tried
and executed them. The causes which called
into existence the first vigilance committee in
California were similar to those that created the
later ones, namely, laxity in the administration
of the laws and distrust in the integrity of
those chosen to administer them. During the
"decade of revolutions," that is, between 1830
and 1840, the frequent change of rulers and the
struggles of the different factions for power en-
gendered in the masses a disregard, not only
for their rulers, but for law and order as well.
Criminals escaped punishment through the
law's delays. No court in California had power
to pass sentence of death on a civilian until its
findings had been approved by the superior tri-
bunal of Mexico. In the slow and tedious proc-
esses of the different courts, a criminal stood a
good show of dying of old age before his case
reached final adjudication. The first committee
of vigilance in California was organized at Los
Angeles, in the house of Juan Temple, April 7,
1836. It was called "Junta Defensora de La
Seguridad Publica," United Defenders of the
Public Security (or safety). Its motto, which ap-
pears in the heading of its "acta," and is there
credited as a quotation from Montesquieu's Ex-
position of the Laws, Book 26, Chapter 23, was,
"Salus populi suprema lex est" (The safety of
the people is the supreme law). There is a
marked similarity between the proceedings of
the Junta Defensora of 1836 and the San Fran-
cisco vigilance committee of 1856; it is not
probable, however, that any of the actors in the
latter committee participated in the former.
Although there is quite a full account of the
proceedings of the Junta Defensora in the Los
Angeles city archives, no historian heretofore
except Bancroft seems to have found it.

The circumstances which brought about the
organization of the Junta Defensora are as fol-

lows: The wife of Domingo Feliz (part owner
of the Los Feliz Rancho), who bore the poet-
ical name of Maria del Rosario Villa, became
infatuated with a handsome but disreputable
Sonoran vaquero, Gervacio Alispaz by name.
She abandoned her husband and lived with Alis-
paz as his mistress at San Gabriel. Feliz Bought
to reclaim his erring wife, but was met by in-
sults and abuse from her paramour, whom he
once wounded in a personal altercation. Feliz
finally invoked the aid of the authorities. The
woman was arrested and brought to town. A
reconciliation was effected between the husband
and wife. Two days later they left town for the
rancho, both riding one horse. On the wav
they were met by Alispaz, and in a personal en-
counter Feliz was stabbed to death by the wife's
paramour. The body was dragged into a ra-
vine and covered with brush and leaves. Next
day, March 29, the body was found and brought
to the city. The murderer and the woman were
arrested and imprisoned. The people were tilled
with horror and indignation, and there were
threats of summary vengeance, but better coun-
sel prevailed.

On the 30th the funeral of Feliz took place,
and, like that of James King of William, twenty
years later, was the occasion for the renewal of
the outcry for vengeance. The attitude of the
people became so threatening that on the 1st
of April an extraordinary session of the ayun-
tamiento was held. A call was made upon the
citizens to form an organization to preserve the
peace. A considerable number responded and
were formed into military patrols under the
command of Don Juan B. Leandry. The illus-
trious ayuntamiento resolved "that whomsoever
shall disturb the public tranquillity shall be pun-
ished according to law." The excitement ap-
parently died out, but it was only the calm that
precedes the storm. The beginning of the
Easter ceremonies was at hand, and it was
deemed a sacrilege to execute the assassins in
holy week, so all further attempts at punishment
were deferred until April 7, the Monday after
Easter, when at dawn, by previous understand-
ing, a number of the better class of citizens
gathered at the house of Juan Temple, which
stood on the site of the new postofftce. An or-

184

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ganization was effected. Victor Prudon, a na-
tive of Breton, France, but a naturalized citizen
of California, was elected president; Manuel
Arzaga, a native of California, was elected sec-
retary, and Francisco Araujo, a retired army
officer, was placed in command of the armed
force. Speeches were made by Prudon, and by
the military commandant and others, setting
forth the necessity of their organization and jus-
tifying their actions. It was unanimously de-
cided that both the man and the woman should
be shot; their guilt being evident, no trial was
deemed necessary.

An address to the authorities and the people
was formulated. A copy of this is preserved in
the city archives. It abounds in metaphors.
It is too long for insertion here. I make a few
extracts: "* * * Believing that immorality
has reached such an extreme that public secur-
ity is menaced and will be lost if the dike of a
solemn example is not opposed to the torrent
of atrocious perfidy, we demand of you that you
execute or deliver to us for immediate execution
the assassin, Gervacio Alispaz, and the unfaith-
ful Maria del Rosario Villa, his accomplice.
* * * Nature trembles at the sight of these
venomous reptiles and the soil turns barren in
its refusal to support their detestable existence.
Let the infernal pair perish! It is the will of the
people. We will not lay down our arms until our
petition is granted and the murderers are exe-
cuted. The proof of their guilt is so clear that
justice needs no investigation. Public vengeance
demands an example and it must be given. The
blood of the Alvarez, of the Patinos, of the
Jenkins, is not yet cold — they, too, being the
unfortunate victims of the brutal passions of
their murderers. Their bloody ghosts shriek
for vengeance. Their terrible voices re-echo
from their graves. The afflicted widow, the for-
saken orphan, the aged father, the brother in
mourning, the inconsolable mother, the public
— all demand speedy punishment of the guilty.
We swear that outraged justice shall be avenged
to-day or we shall die in the attempt. The blood
of the murderers shall be shed to-day or ours
will be to the last drop. It will be published
throughout the world that judges in Los An-
geles tolerate murderers, but that there are

virtuous citizens who sacrifice their lives in
order to preserve those of their countrymen."

"A committee will deliver to the First Consti-
tutional Alcalde a copy of these resolutions,
that he may decide whatever he finds most con-
venient, and one hour's time will be given him
in which to do so. If in that time no answer has
been received, then the judge will be responsible
before God and man for what will follow. Death
to the murderers!

"God and liberty. Angeles, April 7, 1836."

Fifty-five signatures are attached to this doc-
ument; fourteen of these are those of natural-
ized foreigners and the remainder those of na-
tive Californians. The junta was made up of
the best citizens, native and foreign. An extraor-
dinary session of the ayuntamiento was called.
The members of the junta, fully armed, marched
to the city hall to await the decision of the
authorities. The petition was discussed in the
council, and, in the language of the archives:
"This Illustrious Body decided to call said
Breton Prudon to appear before it and to com-
pel him to retire with the armed citizens so that
this Illustrious Body may deliberate at liberty."

"This was done, but he declined to appear
before this body, as he and the armed citizens
were determined to obtain Gervacio Alispaz and
Maria del Rosario Villa. The ayuntamiento
decided that as it had not sufficient force to
compel the armed citizens to disband, they
being in large numbers and composed of the
best and most respectable men of the town, to
send an answer saying that the judges could
not accede to the demand of the armed citi-
zens."

The members of the Junta Defensora then
marched in a body to the jail and demanded the
keys of the guard. These were refused. The
keys were secured by force and Gervacio Alispaz
taken out and shot. The following demand was
then sent to the first alcalde, Manuel Requena:

"It is absolutely necessary that you deliver
to this junta the key of the apartment where
Maria del Rosario Villa is kept.
"God and liberty.

"Victor Prudon, President.
"Manuel Arzaga, Secretary."

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

i>;,

To this the alcalde replied: "Maria del Rosa-
rio Villa is incarcerated at a private dwelling,
whose owner has the key, with instructions not
to deliver the same to any one. The prisoner is
left there at the disposition of the law only.

"God and liberty.

"Manuel Requena, Alcalde."

The key was obtained. The wretched Maria
was taken to the place of execution on a car-
reta and shot. The bodies of the guilty pair
were brought back to the jail and the following
communication sent to the alcalde:

"Junta of the Defenders of Public Safety.

"To the ist Constitutional Alcalde:
"The dead bodies of Gervacio Alispaz and
Maria del Rosario Villa are at your disposal.
We also forward you the jail keys that you may
deliver them to whomsoever is on guard. In
case you are in need of men to serve as guards,
we are all at your disposal.

"God and liberty. Angeles, April 7, 1836.

"Victor Prudon, Pres.
"Manuel Arzaga, Sec."

A few days later the Junta Defensora de La
Seguridad Publica disbanded; and so ended the
only instance in the seventy-five years of Span-
ish and Mexican rule in California, of the people,
by popular tribunal, taking the administration of
justice out of the hands of the legally consti-
tuted authorities.

The tales of the fabulous richness of the gold
fields of California were quickly spread through-
out the world and drew to the territory all
classes and conditions of men, the bad as well
as the good, the vicious as well as the virtuous;
the indolent, the profligate and the criminal
came to prey upon the industrious. These con-
glomerate elements of society found the Land
of Gold practically without law, and the vicious
among them were not long in making it a land
without order. With that inherent trait, which
makes the Anglo-Saxon wherever he may be
an organizer, the American element of the gold
seekers soon adjusted a form of government to
suit the exigencies of the land and the people.
There may have been too much lynching, too
much vigilance committee in it and too little

respect for lawfully constituted authorities, but
it was effective and was suited to the social
conditions existing.

In 1851 the criminal element became so dom-
inant as to seriously threaten the existeno
the chief city, San Francisco. Terrible conflagra-
tions had swept over the city in May and June
of that year and destroyed the greater part of
the business portion. The fires were known to
be of incendiary origin. The bold and defiant
attitude of the vicious classes led to the or-
ganization by the better element, of that form
of popular tribunal called a committee of vigi
lance. The law abiding element among the cit-
izens disregarding the legally constituted
authorities, who were either too weak or too
corrupt to control the law-defying, took the
power in their own hands, organized a vigilance
committee and tried and executed by hanging
four notorious criminals, namely: Jenkins,
Stuart, Whitakcr and McKenzie.

During the proceedings of the vigilance own
mittee a case of mistaken identity came near
costing an innocent man his life. Aboul 8
o'clock in the evening of February 18, two men
entered the store of a Mr. Janscn on Mont-
gomery street and asked to see some blankets.
As the merchant stooped to get the blanket*
one of the men struck him with a sling shot and
both of them beat him into insensibility. They
then opened his desk and carried away all the
gold they could find, about $2,000. The police
arrested two men on suspicion of being the rob
bers. One of the men was identified as Jai
Stuart, a noted criminal, who had murdered
Sheriff Moore at Auburn. He gave the name of
Thomas Burduc, but this was believed to hi' one
of Stuart's numerous aliases. The men were
identified by Mr. Jansen as his assailants. They
were put on trial. W hen the court adjourned
over to the next day a determined effort was
made by the crowd to seize the men and ham:
them. They were finally taken out of the hands
of the officers and given a trial by a jury selected
by a committee of citizens. The jury failed t"
agree, three of the jury being convinced that
the men were not Jansen's assailants. Then tin
mob made a rush to hang the jurv. but were
kept back by a show of revolvers. The prison-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ers were turned over to the court. One of
them, Wildred, broke jail and escaped. Burdue
was tried, convicted and sentenced to fourteen
years' imprisonment. Before the sentence of
the court was executed he was taken to Marys-
ville and arraigned for the murder of Sheriff
Moore. A number of witnesses swore positively
that the man was Stuart; others swore even more
positively that he was not. A close examination
revealed that the prisoner bore every distin-
guishing mark on his person by which Stuart
could be identified. He was convicted and sen-
tenced to be hanged in thirty days. In the mean-
time the vigilance committee of 1856 was or-
ganized and the real Stuart accidentally fell into
the hands of the vigilantes at San Francisco.
He was arrested for a theft he had not com-
mitted and recognized by one of the committee's
guards that he had formerly employed in the
mines. By adroit questioning he was forced to
confess that he was the real Stuart, the murderer
of Sheriff Moore and the assailant of Jansen.
His confederate in the robbery was Whitaker,
one of the four hanged by the committee. Bur-
due was finally released, after having twice
stood under the shadow of the gallows for the
crimes of his double. The confessions of Stuart
and Whitaker implicated a number of their pals.
Some of these were convicted and sent to prison
and others fled the country; about thirty were
banished. Nearly all of the criminals were ex-
convicts from Australia and Tasmania.

The vigorous measures adopted by the com-
mittee purified the city of the vicious class that
had preyed upon it. Several of the smaller
towns and some of the mining camps organized
vigilance committees and a number of the
knaves who had fled from San Francisco met a
deserved fate in other places.

In the early '50s the better elements of San
Francisco's population were so engrossed in
business that they had no time to spare to look
after its political affairs; and its government
gradually drifted into the hands of vicious and
corrupt men. Many of the city authorities had
obtained their offices by fraud and ballot stuf-
fing and "instead of protecting the community
against scoundrels they protected the scoundrels
against the community." James King of Will-

iam, an ex-banker and a man of great courage
and persistence, started a small paper called
the Daily Evening Bulletin. He vigorously as-
sailed the criminal elements and the city and
county officials. Flis denunciations aroused pub-
lic sentiment. The murder of United States
Marshal Richardson by a gambler named Cora
still further inflamed the public mind. It was
feared that by the connivance of some of the
corrupt county officials Cora would escape pun-
ishment. His trial resulted in a hung jury.
There was a suspicion that some of the jury-
men were bribed. King continued through the
Bulletin to hurl his most bitter invectives against
the corrupt officials. They determined to silence
him. He published the fact that James Casey,
a supervisor from the twelfth ward, was an ex-
convict of Sing Sing prison. Casey waylaid
King at the corner of Montgomery and Wash-
ington streets and in a cowardly manner shot
him down. The shooting occurred on the 14th
of May, 1856. Casey immediately surrendered
himself to a deputy sheriff, Lafayete M. Byrne,
who was near. King was not killed, but an ex-
amination of the wound by the physicians de-
cided that there was no hopes of his recovery.
Casey was conducted to the city prison and as
a mob began to gather, for greater safety he
was taken to the county jail. A crowd pursued
him crying, "Hang him," "kill him." At the
jail the mob was stopped by an array of deputy
sheriffs, police officers and a number of Casey's
friends, all armed. The excitement spread
throughout the city. The old vigilance com-
mittee of 1 85 1, or rather a new organization out
of the remnant of the old, was formed. Five
thousand men were enrolled in a few days.
Arms were procured and headquarters estab-
lished on Sacramento street between Davis and
Front. The men were divided into companies.
William T. Coleman, chairman of the vigilance
committee of 1851, was made president or No. 1,
and Isaac Bluxome, Jr., the secretary, was No.
33. Each man was known by number. Charles
Doane was elected chief marshal of the military
division.

The San Francisco Herald (edited by John
Nugent), then the leading paper of the city, came
out with a scathing editorial denouncing the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL KKCORD.

vigilance committee. The merchants at once
withdrew their advertising patronage. Next
morning the paper appeared reduced from forty
columns to a single page, but still hostile to the
committee. It finally died for want of patron-
age.

On Sunday, May 18, 1856, the military di-
vision was ready to storm the jail if necessary to
obtain possession of the prisoners, Casey and
Cora. The different companies, marching from
their headquarters by certain prescribed routes,
all reached the jail at the same time and com-
pletely invested it. They had with them two
pieces of artillery. One of these guns was
planted so as to command the door of the jail.
There were fifteen hundred vigilantes under
arms. A demand was made on Sheriff Scannell
for the prisoners, Cora and Casey. The prison
guard made no resistance, the prisoners were
surrendered and taken at once to the vigilantes'
headquarters.

On the 20th of May the murderers were put
on trial; while the trial was in progress the
death of King was announced. Both men were
convicted and sentenced to be hanged. King's
funeral, the largest and most imposing ever seen
in San Francisco, took place on the 23d. While
the funeral cortege was passing through the
streets Casey and Cora were hanged in front of
the windows of the vigilance headquarters.
About an hour before his execution Cora was
married to a notorious courtesan, Arabella
Ryan, but commonly called Belle Cora. A
Catholic priest, Father Accolti, performed the
ceremony.

Governor J. Neely Johnson, who at first
seemed inclined not to interfere with the vig-
ilantes, afterwards acting under the advice of
David S. Terry, Volney E. Howard and others
of "the law and order faction," issued a proc-
lamation commanding the committee to disband,
to which no attention was paid. The governor
then appointed William T. Sherman major-gen-
eral. Sherman called for recruits to suppress
the uprising. Seventy-five or a hundred, mostly
gamblers, responded to his call. General Wool,
in command of the troops in the department of
the Pacific, refused to loan Governor Johnson
arms to equip his "law and order" recruits and

General Sherman resigned. Volney L. Howard
was then appointed major-general. His princi-
pal military service consisted in proclaiming
what he would do to the "pork merchants" who
constituted the committee. He did nothing ex-
cept to bluster. A squad of the vigilance po-
lice attempted to arrest a man named Maloney.
Maloney was at the time in the company of
David S. Terry (then chief justice of the state)
and several other members of the "law and or-
der" party. They resisted the police and in the
melee Terry stabbed the sergeant of the squad,
Sterling A. Hopkins, and then he and his as-
sociates made their escape to the armory of the
San Francisco Blues, one of their strongholds.

When the report of the stabbing readied
headquarters the great bell sounded the alarm
and the vigilantes in a very brief space of time
surrounded the armory building and had their
cannon planted to batter it down. Terry, Ma-
loney, and the others of their party in the build-
ing, considering discretion the better part of
valor, surrendered and were at once taken to
Fort Gunnybags,* the vigilantes' headquarters.
The arms of the "law and order" party at their
various rendezvous were surrendered to the vig-
ilantes and the companies disbanded.

Terry was closely confined in a cell at the
headquarters of the committee; Hopkins, after
lingering some time between life and death,
finally recovered. Terry was tried for assault
on Hopkins and upon several other persons, was
found guilty, but, after being held as a prisoner
for some time, was finally released. He at once
joined Johnson and Howard at Sacramento,
where he felt much safer than in San Francisco.
He gave the vigilantes no more trouhle.

On the 29th of July, Hethrington and Brace
were hanged from a gallows erected on Davis
street, between Sacramento and Commercial.
Both of these men had committed murder.
These were the last executions by the commit-
tee. The committee transported from the state
thirty disreputable characters and a number de-
ported themselves. A few, and among them the

*The vigilantes built around the building which they
used for headquarters a breastwork made of gunny-
sacks filled with sand. Cannon were planted at the
corners of the redout.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

notorious Ned McGowan, managed to keep con-
cealed until the storm was over. A few of the
expatriated returned after the committee dis-
solved and brought suit for damages, but failed
to recover anything. The committee had paid
the fare of the exiles. It was only the high
toned rascals who were given a cabin passage
that brought the suits. The committee finished
its labors and dissolved with a grand parade on
the 18th of August (1856). It did a good work.
For several years after, San Francisco from be-
ing one of the worst, became one of the best
governed cities in the United States. The com-
mittee was made up of men from the northern
and western states. The so-called "law and
order" party was mostly composed of the pro-
slavery office-holding faction that ruled the state
at that time.

When the vigilance committees between 185 1
and 1856 drove disreputable characters from
San Francisco and the northern mines, many of
them drifted southward and found a lodgment
for a time in the southern cities and towns. Los
Angeles was not far from the Mexican line, and
any one who desired to escape from justice,
fleet mounted, could speedily put himself be-
yond the reach of his pursuers. All these
causes and influences combined to produce a
saturnalia of crime that disgraced that city in
the early '50s.

Gen. J. H. Bean, a prominent citizen of
Southern California, while returning to Los An-
geles from his place of business at San Gabriel
late one evening in November, 1852, was at-
tacked by two men, who had been lying in wait
for him. One seized the bridle of his horse and
jerked the animal back on his haunches; the
other seized the general and pulled him from the
saddle. Bean made a desperate resistance, but
was overpowered and stabbed to death. The
assassination of General Bean resulted in the
organization of a vigilance committee and an
effort was made to rid the country of desper-
adoes. A number of arrests were made. Three
suspects were tried by the committee for various
crimes. One, Cipiano Sandoval, a poor cob-
bler of San Gabriel, was charged with complicity
in the murder of General Bean. He strenuously
maintained that he was innocent. He, with the

other two, were sentenced to be hanged. On
the following Sunday morning the doomed men
were conducted to the top of Fort Hill, where
the gallows stood. Sandoval made a brief
speech, again declaring his innocence. The
others awaited their doom in silence. The trap
fell and all were launched into eternity. Years
afterward one of the real murderers on his
deathbed revealed the truth and confessed his
part in the crime. The poor cobbler was inno-
cent.

In 1854 drunkenness, gambling, murder and
all forms of immorality and crime were ram-
pant in Los Angeles. The violent deaths, it is
said, averaged one for every day in the year. It
was a common question at the breakfast table,
"Well, how many were killed last night?" Little
or no attention was paid to the killing of an
Indian or a half breed; it was only when a gente
de razon was the victim that the community was
aroused to action.

The Kern river gold rush, in the winter of
1854-55, brought from the northern mines fresh
relays of gamblers and desperadoes and crime
increased. The Southern Calif omian of March
7, 1855, commenting on the general lawlessness
prevailing, says: "Last Sunday night was a
brisk night for killing. Four men were shot
and killed and several wounded in shooting af-
frays."

A worthless fellow by the name of David
Brown, who had, without provocation, killed a
companion named Clifford, was tried and sen-
tenced to be hanged with one Felipe Alvitre, a
Mexican, who had murdered an American
named Ellington, at El Monte. There was a
feeling among the people that Brown, through
quibbles of law, would escape the death penalty,
and there was talk of lynching. Stephen C.
Foster, the mayor, promised that if justice was
not legally meted out to Brown by the law, then
he would resign his office and head the lynching
party. January 10, 1855, an order was received
from Judge Murray, of the supreme court, stay-
ing the execution of Brown, but leaving Alvitre
to his fate. January 12 Alvitre was hanged by
the sheriff in the jail yard in the presence of an
immense crowd. The gallows were taken down
and the guards dismissed. The crowd gathered

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

outside the jail yard. Speeches were made.
The mayor resigned his office and headed the
mob. The doors of the jail were broken down;
Brown was taken across Spring street to a
large gateway opening into a corral and hanged
from the crossbeam. Foster was re-elected by
an almost unanimous vote at a special election.
The city marshal, who had opposed the action
of the vigilantes, was compelled to resign.

During 1855 and 1856 lawlessness increased.
There was an organized band of about one hun-
dred Mexicans, who patroled the highways,
robbing and murdering. They threatened the
extermination of the Americans and there were
fears of a race war, for many who were not
members of the gang sympathized with them.
In 1856 a vigilance committee was organized
with Myron Norton as president and H. N.
Alexander as secretary. A number of dis-
reputable characters were forced to leave town.
The banditti, under their leaders, Pancho Dan-
iel and Juan Flores, were plundering and com-
mitting outrages in the neighborhood of San
Juan Capistrano.

On the night of January 22, 1857, Sheriff
James R. Barton left Los Angeles with a posse,
consisting of William H. Little, Charles K.
Baker, Charles F. Daley, Alfred Hardy and
Frank Alexander with the intention of captur-
ing some of the robbers. At Sepulveda's ranch
next morning the sheriff's party was warned that
the robbers were some fifty strong, well armed
and mounted, and would probably attack them.
Twelve miles further the sheriff and his men en-
countered a detachment of the banditti. A
short, sharp engagement took place. Barton,
Baker, Little and Daley were killed. Hardy and
Alexander made their escape by the fleetness
of their horses. When the news reached Los
Angeles the excitement became intense. A
public meeting was held to devise plans to rid
the community not only of the roving gang of
murderers, but also of the criminal classes in
the city, who were known to be in sympathy
with the banditti. All suspicious houses were
searched and some fifty persons arrested. Sev-
eral companies were organized; the infantry to
guard the city and the mounted men to scour
the country. Companies were also formed at

San Bernardino and El Monte, while the mil-
itary authorities at Fort Tejon and San Diego
despatched soldiers to aid in the good work of
exterminating crime and criminals.

The robbers were pursued into the mountain*
and nearly all captured. Gen. Andres Pico,
with a company of native Caliiornians, was mosl
efficient in the pursuit. He captured Silvas and
Ardillero, two of the most noted of the gang,
and hanged them where they were cap-
tured. Fifty-two were lodged in the city jail.
Of these, eleven were hanged for various crimes
and the remainder set free. Juan Flores, one
of the leaders, was condemned by popular vote
and on February 14, 1857, was hanged near the
top of Fort Plill in the presence of nearly the
entire population of the town. He was only
twenty-one years of age. Pancho Daniel, an-
other of the leaders, was captured on the 19th
of January, 1858, near San Jose. He was found
by the sheriff, concealed in a haystack. Alter
his arrest he was part of the time in jail and part
of the time out on bail. He had been tried three
times, but through law quibbles had escaped
conviction. A change of venue to Santa Bar-
bara had been granted. The people determined
to take the law in their own hands. On the
morning of November 30, 1858, the body of
Pancho was hanging from a beam across the
gateway of the jail yard. Four of the banditti
were executed by the people of San Gabriel,
and Leonardo Lopez, under sentence of the
court, was hanged by the sheriff. The gang was
broken up and the moral atmosphere of Los
Angeles somewhat purified.

November 17, 1862, John Rains of Cuca-
monga ranch was murdered near Azusa. De-
cember 9, 1863, the sheriff was taking Manuel
Cerradel to San Ouentin to serve a ten years"
sentence. When the sheriff went aboard the tug
boat Cricket at Wilmington, to proceed to the
Senator, quite a number of other persons took
passage. On the way down the harbor, the
prisoner was seized by the passengers, who
were vigilantes, and hanged to the rigging: after
hanging twenty minutes the body was taken
down, stones tied to the feet and it was thrown
overboard. Cerradel was implicated in the mur-
der of Rains.

190

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAI RECORD.

In the fall of 1863 lawlessness had again be-
come rampant in Los Angeles ; one of the chiefs
of the criminal class was a desperado by the
name of Boston Daimwood. He was suspected
of the murder of a miner on the desert
and was loud in his threats against the lives
of various citizens. He and four other well-
known criminals, Wood, Chase, Ybarra and
Olivas, all of whom were either murder-
ers or horse thieves, were lodged in jail. On
the 21st of November two hundred armed
citizens battered down the doors of the jail,
took the five wretches out and hanged them to
the portico of the old court house on Spring
street, which stood on the present site of the
Phillips block.

On the 24th of October, 1871, occurred in
Los Angeles a most disgraceful affair, known
as the Chinese massacre. It grew out of one
of those interminable feuds between rival
tongs of highbinders, over a woman. Desul-
tory firing had been kept up between the rival
factions throughout the day. About 5:30 p. m.
Policeman Bilderrain visited the seat of war, an
old adobe house on the corner of Arcadia street
and "Nigger alley," known as the Coronel build-
ing. Finding himself unable to quell the dis-
turbance he called for help. Robert Thompson,
an old resident of the city, was among the first
to reach the porch of the house in answer to the
police call for help. He received a mortal wound
from a bullet fired through the door of a Chi-
nese store. He died an hour later in Woll-
weber's drug store. The Chinese in the mean-
time barricaded the doors and windows of the
old adobe and prepared for battle. The news
of the fight and of the killing of Thompson
spread throughout the city and an immense
crowd gathered in the streets around the build-
ing with the intention of wreaking vengeance on
the Chinese.

The first attempt by the mob to dislodge the
Chinamen was by cutting holes through the flat
brea covered roof and firing pistol shots into the
interior of the building. One of the besieged
crawled out of the building and attempted to
escape, but was shot down before half way
across Negro alley. Another attempted to es-
cape into Los Angeles street; he was seized.

dragged to the gate of Tomlinson's corral on
New High street, and hanged.

About 9 o'clock a part of the mob had suc-
ceeded in battering a hole in the eastern end of
the building; through this the rioters, with
demoniac howlings, rushed in, firing pistols to
the right and left. Huddled in corners and hid-
den behind boxes they found eight terror-
stricken Chinamen, who begged piteously for
their lives. These were brutally dragged out
and turned over to the fiendish mob. One was
dragged to death by a rope around his neck;
three, more dead than alive from kicking and
beating, were hanged to a wagon on Los An-
geles street; and four were hanged to the gate-
way of Tomlinson's corral. Two of the victims
were mere boys. While the shootings and hang-
ings were going on thieves were looting the
other houses in the Chinese quarters. The
houses were broken into, trunks, boxes and
other receptacles rifled of their contents, and
any Chinamen found in the buildings were
dragged forth to slaughter. Among the vic-
tims was a doctor, Gene Tung, a quiet, inof-
fensive old man. He pleaded for his life in good
English, offering his captors all his money,
some $2,000 to $3,000. He was hanged, his
money stolen and one of his fingers cut off to
obtain a ring he wore. The amount of money
stolen by the mob from the Chinese quarters
was variously estimated at from $40,000 to
$50,000.

About 9:30 p. m. the law abiding citizens,
under the leadership of Henry Hazard, R. M.
Widney, H. C. Austin, Sheriff Burns and oth-
ers, had rallied in sufficient force to make an
attempt to quell the mob. Proceeding to China-
town they rescued several Chinamen from the
rioters. The mob finding armed opposition
quickly dispersed.

The results of the mob's murderous work
were ten men hanged on Los Angeles street,
some to wagons and some to awnings; five
handed at Tomlinson's corral and four shot to
death in Negro alley, nineteen in all. Of all the
Chinamen murdered, the only one known to be
implicated in the highbinder war was Ah Choy.
All the other leaders escaped to the country
before the attack was made by the mob. The

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL Rl i iRIX

I'M

grand jury, after weeks of investigation, found
indictments against one hundred and fifty per-
sons alleged to have been actively engaged in
the massacre. The jury's report severely cen-
sured "the officers of this county, as well as of
this city, whose duty it is to preserve peace,"
and declared that they "were deplorably ineffi-
cient in the performance of their duty during
the scenes of confusion and bloodshed which
disgraced our city, and has cast a reproach upon
the people of Los Angeles county." Of all those
indicted but six were convicted. These were
sentenced to from four to six years in the state's
prison, but through some legal technicality they
were all released after serving a part of their
sentence.

The last execution in Los Angeles by a vig-
ilance committee was that of Michael Lachenias,
a French desperado, who had killed five or six
men. The offense for which he was hanged was
the murder of Jacob Bell, a little inoffensive
man, who owned a small farm near that of
Lachenias, south of the city. There had been
a slight difference between them in regard to
the use of water from a zanja. Lachenias, with-
out a word of warning, rode up to Bell, where
he was at work in his field, drew a revolver and
shot him dead. The murderer then rode into
town and boastingly informed the people of
what he had done and told them where they
would find Bell's body. He then surrendered
himself to the officers and was locked up in
jail.

Public indignation was aroused. A meeting
was held in Stearns' hall on Los Angeles street.
A vigilance committee was formed and the de-
tails of the execution planned. On the morning
of the 17th of December, 1870, a body of three
hundred armed men marched to the jail, took
Lachenias out and proceeded with him to Tom-
linson's corral on Temple and New High streets,
and hanged him. The crowd then quietly dis-
persed.

A strange metamorphosis took place in the
character of the lower classes of the native Cal-
ifornians after the conquest. (The better classes
were not changed in character by the changed
conditions of the country, but throughout were
true gentlemen and most worthy and honorable

citizens.) Before the conquest by the Ameri-
cans they were a peaceful and contented people.
There were no organized bands of outlaws
among them. After the discovery of gold the
evolution of a banditti began and they produced
some of the boldest robbers and most daring
highwaymen the world has seen.

The injustice of their conquerors had much to
do with producing this change. The Ameri-
cans not only took possession of their country
and its government, but in many cases they de-
spoiled them of their ancestral acres and tluir
personal property. Injustice rankles; and it is
not strange that the more lawless among the
native population sought revenge and retalia-
tion. They were often treated by the rougher
American element as aliens and intruders, who
had no right in the land of their birth. Such
treatment embittered them more than loss of
property. There were those, however, among
the natives, who, once entered upon a career
of crime, found robbery and murder congenial
occupations. The plea' of injustice was no ex-
tenuation for their crimes.

Joaquin Murieta was the most noted of the
Mexican and Californian desperadoes of the
early '50s. Pie was born in Sonora of good fam-
ily and received some education. He came to
California with the Sonoran migration of 1849,
and secured a rich claim on the Stanislaus. I It-
was dispossessed of this by half a dozen Amer-
ican desperadoes, his wife abused and both
driven from the diggings. He next took up a
ranch on the Calaveras, but from this he was
driven by two Americans. He next tried min-
ing in the Murphy diggings, but was unsuccess-
ful. His next occupation was that of a monte
player. While riding into town on a horse bor-
rowed from his half-brother he was stopped by
an American, who claimed that the horse was
stolen from him. Joaquin protested that the
horse was a borrowed one from his halt-brother
and offered to procure witnesses to prove it.
He was dragged from the saddle amid cries of
"hang the greaser." He was taken to the ranch
of his brother. The brother was hanged to the
limb of a tree, no other proof of his crime being
needed than the assertion of the American that
the horse was his. Joaquin was stripped, bound

192

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

to the same tree and flogged. The demon was
aroused within him, and no wonder, he vowed
revenge on the men who had murdered his
brother and beaten him. Faithfully he carried
out his vow of vengeance. Had he doomed
only these to slaughter it would have been but
little loss, but the implacable foe of every
American, he made the innocent suffer with the
guilty. He was soon at the head of a band of
desperadoes, varying in numbers from twenty to
forty. For three years he and his band were the
terror of the state. From the northern mines
to the Mexican border they committed robberies
and murders. Claudio and some of his sub-
ordinates were killed, but the robber chief
seemed to bear a charmed life. Large rewards
were offered for him dead or alive and numerous
attempts were made to take him. Capt. Harry
Love at the head of a band of rangers August,
1853, came upon Joaquin and six of his gang
in a camp near the Tejon Pass. In the fight that
ensued Joaquin and Three Fingered Jack were
killed. With the loss of their leaders the or-
ganization was broken up.

The last organized band of robbers which
terrorized the southern part of the state was
that of Vasquez. Tiburcio Vasquez was born
in Monterey county, of Mexican parents, in
1837. Early in life he began a career of crime.
After committing a number of robberies and
thefts he was captured and sent to San Quentin
for horse stealing. He was discharged in 1863,
but continued his disreputable career. He
united with Procopio and Soto, two noted ban-
dits. Soto was killed by Sheriff Morse of Ala-
meda county in a desperate encounter. Vasquez
and his gang of outlaws committed robberies
throughout the southern part of the state, rang-
ing from Santa Clara and Alameda counties to
the Mexican line. Early in May, 1874, Sheriff
William Rowland of Los Angeles county, who
had repeatedly tried to capture Vasquez, but
whose plans had been foiled by the bandit's

spies, learned that the robber chief was mak-
ing his headquarters at the house of Greek
George, about ten miles due west of Los An-
geles, toward Santa Monica, in a canon of the
Cahuenga mountains. The morning of May 15
was set for the attack. To avert suspicion
Sheriff Rowland remained in the city. The at-
tacking force, eight in number, were under
command of Under-Sheriff Albert Johnson, the
other members of the force were Major H. M.
Mitchell, attorney-at-law; J. S. Bryant, city con-
stable; E. Harris, policeman; W. E. Rogers,
citizen; B. F. Hartley, chief of police; and D.
K. Smith, citizen, all of Los Angeles, and a Mr.
Beers, of San Francisco, special correspondent
of the San Francisco Chronicle.

At 4 a. m. on the morning of the 15th of May
the posse reached Major Mitchell's bee ranch
in a small canon not far from Greek George's.
From this point the party reconnoitered the
bandit's hiding place and planned an attack. As
the deputy sheriff and his men were about to
move against the house a high box wagon drove
up the canon from the direction of Greek
George's place. In this were two natives; the
sheriff's party climbed into the high wagon box
and, lying down, compelled the driver to drive
up to the back of Greek George's house,
threatening him and his companion with death
on the least sign of treachery. Reaching the
house they surrounded it and burst in the door.
Vasquez, who had been eating his breakfast, at-
tempted to escape through a small window.
The party opened fire on him. Being wounded
and finding himself surrounded on all sides, he
surrendered. He was taken to the Los Angeles
jail. His injuries proved to be mere flesh
wounds. He received a great deal of maudlin
sympathy from silly women, who magnified him
into a hero. He was taken to San Jose, tried
for murder, found guilty and hanged, March 19.
1875. His band was thereupon broken up and
dispersed.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

FILIBUSTERS AND FILIBUSTERING.

THE rush of immigration to California in
the early '50s had brought to the state
a class of adventurers who were too
lazy or too proud to work. They were ready
to engage in almost any lawless undertaking
that promised plunder and adventure. The de-
feat of the pro-slavery politicians in their at-
tempts to fasten their "peculiar institution" upon
any part of the territory acquired from Mex-
ico had embittered them. The more un-
scrupulous among them began to look around
for new fields, over which slavery might be ex-
tended. As it could be made profitable only in
southern lands, Cuba, Mexico and Central
America became the arenas for enacting that
form of piracy called "filibustering." The object
of these forays, when organized by Americans,
was to seize upon territory as had been done
in Texas and erect it into an independent gov-
ernment that ultimately would be annexed to
the United States and become slave territory.
Although the armed invasion of countries with
which the United States was at peace was a di-
rect violation of its neutrality laws, yet the fed-
eral office-holders in the southern states and in
California, all of whom belonged to the pro-
slavery faction, not only made no attempt to
prevent these invasions, but secretly aided them
or at least sympathized with them to the extent
of allowing them to recruit men and depart
without molestation. There was a glamour of
romance about these expeditions that influenced
unthinking young men of no fixed principles
to join them; these were to be pitied. But the
leaders of them and their abettors were cold,
selfish, scheming politicians, willing, if need be,
to overthrow the government of the nation and
build on its ruins an oligarchy of slave holders.

The first to organize a filibuster expedition in
California was a Frenchman. Race prejudices
were strong in early mining days. The United
is

States had recently been at war with Mexico.
The easy conquest of that country had bred a
contempt for its peoples. The Sonoran migra-
tion, that begun soon after the discovery of
gold in California, brought a very undesirable
class of immigrants to the state. Sailing vessels
had brought from the west coast of South
America another despised class of mongrel
Spanish. It exasperated the Americans to see
these people digging gold and carrying it out
of the country. This antagonism extended, more
or less, to all foreigners, but was strongest
against men of the Latin races. Many French-
men, through emigration schemes gotten up
in Paris, had been induced to come to Califor-
nia. Some of these were men of education and
good standing, but they fell under the ban of
prejudices and by petty persecutions were
driven out of the mines and forced to earn a
precarious living in the cities. There wa- a
great deal of dissatisfaction among the French-
men with existing conditions in California, and
they were ready to embark in any scheme that
promised greater rewards. Among the French
population of San Francisco was a man of noble
family, Count Gaston Roaul de Raousset-Boul-
bon. He had lost his ancestral lands and was
in reduced circumstances. He was a man of
education and ability, but visionary. He con-
ceived the idea of establishing a French colony
on the Sonora border and opening the mines
that had been abandoned on account of Apache
depredations. By colonizing the border he
hoped to put a stop to American encroachments.
He divulged his scheme to the French consul,
Dillon, at San Francisco, who entered heartily
into it. Raousset was sent to the City of Mex-
ico, where he obtained from President Arista
the desired concession of land and the promise
of financial assistance from a leading banking
house there on condition that he proceed at

1U4

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

once to Sonora with an armed company of
Frenchmen. Returning to San Francisco he
quickly recruited from among the French resi-
dents two hundred and fifty men and with these
he sailed for Guaymas, where he arrived early
in June, 1852. He was well received at first,
but soon found himself regarded with suspicion.
He was required by the authorities to remain
at Guaymas. After a month's detention he was
allowed to proceed through Hermosilla to the
Arizona border.

When. about one hundred miles from Arispe
he received an order from General Blanco, then
at Hermosilla, to report to him. While halting
at El Caric to consider his next move he re-
ceived a reinforcement of about eighty French
colonists, who had come to the country the year
before under command of Pindray. Pindray
had met his death in a mysterious manner. It
was supposed that he was poisoned. The colon-
ist had remained in the country. Raousset sent
one of his men, Gamier, to interview Blanco.
General Blanco gave his ultimatum — First, that
the Frenchmen should become naturalized citi-
zens of Mexico; or, secondly, they should wait
until letters of security could be procured from
the capital, when they might proceed to Arizona
and take possession of any mines they found;
or, lastly, they might put themselves under the
leadership of a Mexican officer and then proceed.
Raousset and his followers refused to accede to
any of these propositions. Blanco began col-
lecting men and munitions of war to oppose the
French. Raousset raised the flag of revolt and
invited the inhabitants to join him in gaining
the independence of Sonora. After drilling his
men a few weeks and preparing for hostilities
he began his march against Hermosilla, distant
one hundred and fifty miles. Fie met with no
opposition, the people along his route welcom-
ing the French. General Blanco had twelve
hundred men to defend the city. But instead of
preparing to resist the advancing army he sent
delegates to Raousset to offer him money to let
the city alone. Raousset sent back word that
at 8 o'clock he would begin the attack; and at
11 would be master of the city. He was as good
as his word. The Frenchmen charged the Mex-
icans and although the opposing force num-

bered four to one of the assailants, Raousset's
men captured the town and drove Blanco's
troops out of it. The Mexican loss was two-
hundred killed and wounded. The French loss
seventeen killed and twenty-three wounded
Raousset's men were mere adventurers and were
in the country without any definite purpose.
Could he have relied on them, he might have
captured all of Sonora.

He abandoned Hermosilla. Blanco, glad to
get rid of the filibusters on any terms, raised
$11,000 and chartered a vessel to carry them
back to San Francisco. A few elected to re-
main. Raousset went to Mazatlan and a few
months later he reached San Francisco, where
he was lionized as a hero. Upon an invitation
from Santa Ana, who had succeeded Arista as
president, he again visited the Mexican capital
in June, 1853. Santa Ana was profuse in prom-
ises. He wanted Raousset to recruit five hun-
dred Frenchmen to protect the Sonora frontier
against the Indians, promising ample remunera-
tion and good pay for their services. Raousset,
finding that Santa Ana's promises could not be
relied upon, and that the wiley schemer was
about to have him arrested, made his escape to
Acapulco, riding several horses to death to
reach there ahead of his pursuers. He embarked
immediately for San Francisco.

In the meantime another filibuster, William
Walker, with forty-one followers had landed at
La Paz November 3, 1853, and proclaimed a
new nation, the Republic of Lower California.
Santa Ana, frightened by this new invasion, be-
gan making overtures through the Mexican con-
sul, Luis del Valle, at San Francisco to secure
French recruits for military service on the Mex-
ican frontier. Del Valle applied to the French
consul, Dillon, and Dillon applied to Raousset.
Raousset soon secured eight hundred recruits
and chartered the British ship Challenge to take
them to Guaymas. Then the pro-slavery federal
officials at San Francisco were aroused to ac-
tion. The neutrality laws were being violated.
It was not that they cared for the laws, but they
feared that this new filibustering scheme might
interfere with their pet, Walker, who had, in ad-
dition to the Republic of Lower California,
founded another nation, the Republic of Sonora,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

in both of which he had decreed slavery. The
ship was seized, but after a short detention was
allowed to sail with three hundred French-
men.

Del Valle was vigorously prosecuted by the
federal authorities for violation of a section of
the neutrality laws, which forbade the enlistment
within the United States of soldiers to serve un-
der a foreign power. Dillon, the French con-
sul, was implicated and on his refusal to testify
in court he was arrested. He fell back on his
dignity and asserted that his nation had been in-
sulted through him and closed his consulate.
For a time there were fears of international
trouble.

Del Valle was found guilty of violating the
neutrality laws, but was never punished. The
pro-slavery pet, Walker, and his gang were
driven out of Mexico and the federal officials
had no more interest in enforcing neutrality
laws. Meanwhile Raousset, after great diffi-
culties, had joined the three hundred French-
men at Guaymas. A strip of northern Sonora
had been sold under what is known as the Gads-
den purchase to the United States. There was
no longer any opportunity to secure mines there
from Mexico, but Raousset thought he could
erect a barrier to any further encroachments of
the United States and eventually secure Mexico
for France. His first orders on reaching Guay-
mas to the commander of the French, Desmaris,
was to attack the Mexican troops and capture
the city. His order did not reach Desmaris. His
messenger was arrested and the Mexican au-
thorities begun collecting forces to oppose
Raousset. Having failed to receive reinforce-
ments, and his condition becoming unendurable,
he made an attack on the Mexican forces, twelve
hundred strong. After a brave assault he was
defeated. He surrendered to the French consul
on the assurance that his life and that of his
men would be spared. He was treacherously
surrendered by the French consul to the Mex-
ican general. He was tried by a court-martial,
found guilty and sentenced to be shot. On the
morning of August 12, 1854, he was executed.
His misguided followers were shipped back to
San Francisco. So ended the first California
filibuster.

195

The first American born filibuster who or-
ganized one of these piratical expeditions wai
William Walker, a native of Tennessee. He
came to California with the rush of 1850. He
had started out in life to be a doctor, had studied
law and finally drifted into journalism. He be-
longed to the extreme pro-slavery faction. I It-
located in San Francisco and found employment
on the Herald. His bitter invective against the
courts for their laxity in punishing crime raised
the ire of Judge Levi Parsons, who fined Walker
$500 for contempt of court and ordered him
imprisoned until the fine was paid. Walker re-
fused to pay the fine and went to jail. Ik- at
once bounded into notoriety. lie was a mar-
tyr to the freedom of the press. A public in-
dignation meeting was called. An immense
crowd of sympathizers called on Walker in jail.
A writ of habeas corpus was sued out and he
was released from jail and discharged. In t la-
legislature of 1852 he tried to have Parson im-
peached, but failed. He next opened a law of-
fice in Marysvillc.

The success of Raousset-Boulbon in his first
expedition to Sonora had aroused the ambition
of Walker to become the founder of a new gov-
ernment. His first efforts were directed towards
procuring from Mexico a grant on the Sonora
border; this was to be colonized with Americans,
who would protect the Mexican frontier from
Apache incursion. This was a mere subterfuge
and the Mexican authorities were not deceived
by it — he got no grant. To forestall Raousset-
Boulbon, who was again in the field with hifl
revolutionary scheme, Walker opened a recruit-
ing office. Each man wras to receive a square
league of land and plunder galore. The bait
took, meetings were held, scrip sold and re-
cruits flocked to Walker. The brig Arrow was
chartered to carry the liberators to their des-
tination. The pro-slavery officials, who held all
the offices, winked at this violation of the neu-
trality laws. There was but one man, General
Hitchcock, who dared to do his duty. He seized
the vessel; it was released, and Hitchcock re-
moved from command. Jefferson Davis wai
secretary of war and Hitchcock was made to fool
his wrath for interfering with one of Davis' pet
projects, the extension of slavery. Wttker

19(i

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

sailed in another vessel, the Caroline, taking
with him forty-one of his followers, well armed
with rifles and revolvers to develop the re-
sources of the country.

The vessel with Walker and his gang sneaked
into La Paz under cover of a Mexican flag. He
seized the unsuspecting governor and other offi-
cials and then proclaimed the Republic of Lower
California. He appointed from his following a
number of officials with high sounding titles.
He adopted the code of Louisiana as the law of
the land. This, as far as he was able, introduced
into the country human slavery, which indeed
was about the sole purpose of his filibuster-
ing schemes. Fearing that the Mexican gov-
ernment might send an expedition across the
gulf to stop his marauding, he slipped out of
the harbor and sailed up to Todas Santos, so as
to be near the United States in case the Mexican
government should make it uncomfortable for
him. With this as headquarters he began prepa-
rations for an invasion of Sonora. His delectable
followers appropriated to their own use what-
ever they could find in the poverty-stricken
country. The news of the great victory at La
Paz reached San Francisco and created great
enthusiasm among Walker's sympathizers. His
vice-president, Watkins, enrolled three hundred
recruits and sent them to him, "greatly to the
relief of the criminal calendar."

Walker began to drill his recruits for the con-
quest of Sonora. These patriots, who had ral-
lied to the support of the new republic, under
the promise of rich churches to pillage and well-
stocked ranches to plunder, did not take kindly
to a diet of jerked beef and beans and hard drill-
ing under a torrid sun. Some rebelled and it
became necessary for Walker to use the lash
and even to shoot two of them for the good of
the cause. The natives rebelled when they found
their cattle and frijoles disappearing and the so-
called battle of La Gualla was fought between
the natives and a detachment of Walker's forag-
ers, several of whom were killed. The news of
this battle reached San Francisco and was mag-
nified into a great victory. The new republic
had been baptized in the blood of its martyrs.

After three months spent in drilling, Walker
began his march to Sonora with but one hun-

dred men, and a small herd of cattle for food.
Most of the others had deserted. In his jour-
ney across the desert the Indians stole some of
his cattle and more of his men deserted. On
reaching the Colorado river about half of his
force abandoned the expedition and marched
to Fort Yuma, where Major Heintzelman re-
lieved their necessities. Walker with thirty-five
men had started back for Santa Tomas. They
brought up at Tia Juana, where they crossed
the American line, surrendered and gave their
paroles to Major McKinstry of the United
States army. When Walker and his Falstaffian
army reached San Francisco they were lionized
as heroes. All they had done was to kill a few
inoffensive natives on the peninsula and steal
their cattle. Their valiant leader had proclaimed
two republics and decreed (on paper) that slav-
ery should prevail in them. He had had sev-
eral of his dupes whipped and two of them shot,
which was probably the most commendable
thing he had done. His proclamations were
ridiculous and his officers with their high sound-
ing titles had returned from their burlesque con-
quest with scarcely rags enough on them to
cover their nakedness. Yet, despite all this,
the attempt to enlarge the area of slave territory
covered him with glory and his rooms were the
resort of all the pro-slavery officials of Califor-
nia.

The federal officials made a show of prosecut-
ing the filibusters. Watkins, the vice-president
of the Republic of Lower California and So-
nora, was put on trial in the United States dis-
trict court. The evidence was so plain and the
proof so convincing that the judge was com-
pelled to convict against his will. This delightful
specimen of a pro-slavery justice expressed
from the bench his sympathy for "those spirited
men who had gone forth to upbuild the broken
altars and rekindle the extinguished fires of lib-
erty in Mexico and Lower California." With
such men to enforce the laws, it was not strange
that vigilance committees were needed in Cal-
ifornia. Watkins and Emory, the so-called sec-
retary of state, were fined each $1,500. The
fines were never paid and no effort was ever
made to compel their payment. The secretary
of war and the secretary of the navy were put

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

I!»7

on trial and acquitted. This ended the shame-
ful farce.

Walker's next expedition was to Nicaragua in
1855. A revolution was in progress there. He
joined forces with the Democratic party or anti-
legitimists. He took but fifty-six men with
him. These were called the American phalanx.
His first engagement was an attack upon the
fortified town of Rivas. Although his men
fought bravely, they were defeated and two of
his best officers, Kewen and Crocker, killed.
His next fight was the battle of Virgin Bay, in
which, with fifty Americans and one hundred
and twenty natives, he defeated six hundred
legitimists. He received reinforcements from
California and reorganized his force. He
seized the Accessory Transit Company's lake
steamer La Virgin against the protest of the
company, embarked his troops on board of it
and by an adroit movement captured the capi-
tal city, Granada. His exploits were heralded
abroad and recruits flocked to his support. The
legitimist had fired upon a steamer bringing pas-
sengers up the San Juan river and killed several.
Walker in retaliation ordered Mateo Mazorga,
the legitimist secretary of state, whom he had
taken prisoner at Granada, shot. Peace was de-
clared between the two parties and Patrico
Rivas made president. Rivas was president only
in name; Walker was the real head of the gov-
ernment and virtually dictator.

He was now at the zenith of his power. By a
series of arbitrary acts he confiscated the Ac-
cessory Transit Company's vessels and charter.
This company had become a power in California
travel and had secured the exclusive transit of
passengers by the Nicaragua route, then the
most popular route to California.

By this action he incurred the enmity of Van-
derbilt, who henceforth worked for his down-
fall. The confiscation of the transit company's
right destroyed confidence in the route, and
travel virtually ceased by it. This was a blow
to the prosperity of the country. To add to
Walker's misfortunes, the other Central Amer-
ican states combined to drive the hated foreign-
ers out of the country. He had gotten rid of
Rivas and had secured the presidency for him-
self. He had secured the repeal of the Nic-

aragua laws against slavery and thus paved the
way for the introduction of his revered institu-
tion. His army now amounted to about twelve
hundred men, mostly recruited from California
and the slave states. The cholera broke out
among his forces and in the armies of the allies
and numbers died. His cause was rapidly wan-
ing. Many of his dupes deserted. A series of
disasters arising from his blundering and in-
capacity, resulted in his overthrow. He and
sixteen of his officers were taken out of the
country on the United States sloop of war, St.
Mary's. The governor of Panama refused to
allow him to land in that city. He was sent
across the isthmus under guard to Aspinwall
and from there with his staff took passage to
New Orleans. His misguided followers were
transported to Panama and found their way
back to the United States.

Upon arriving at New Orleans he began re-
cruiting for a new expedition. One hundred and
fifty of his "emigrants" sailed from Mobile; the
pro-slavery federal officials allowing them to
depart. They were wrecked on Glover's reef,
about seventy miles from Balizc. They were
rescued by a British vessel and returned to Mo-
bile. Walker, with one hundred and thirty-two
armed emigrants, landed at Punta Arenas. No-
vember 25, 1857, and hoisted his Nicaraguan
flag and called himself commander-in-chief of
the army of Nicaragua. He and his men bc^an
a career of plunder: seized the fort or Cas-
tillo on the San Juan river; captured steam-
ers, killed several inhabitants and made
prisoners of others. Commander Paulding,
of the United States flagship Wabash, then
on that coast, regarded these acts as rapine
and murder, and Walker and his men as out-
laws and pirates. lie broke up their carnp. dis-
armed Walker and his emigrants and sent them
to the United States for trial. But instead of
Walker and his followers being tried for piracy
their oro-slavery abettors made heroes of them.

Walker's last effort to regain his lost prestige
in Nicaragua was made in i860. With two hun-
dred men, recruited in New Orleans he landed
near Truxillo. in Honduras. His intention was
to make his way by land to Nicaragua. He vcrv
soon found armed opposition. His new recruits

198

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

were not inclined to sacrifice themselves to make
him dictator of some country that they had no
interest in. So they refused to stand up against
the heavy odds they encountered in every fight.
Finding his situation growing desperate, he was
induced to surrender himself to the captain of
the British man-of-war Icarus. The authorities
of Honduras made a demand on the captain for
Walker. That British officer promptly turned
the filibuster over to them. He was tried by
a court-martial, hastily convened, found guilty
of the offenses charged, and condemned to die.
September 25, i860, he was marched out and,
in accordance with his sentence, shot to death.

Walker's career is an anomaly in the history
of mankind. Devoid of all the characteristics of
a great leader, without a commanding presence,
puny in size, homely to the point of ugliness,
in disposition, cold, cruel, selfish, heartless, stol-
idly indifferent to the suffering of others, living
only to gratify the cravings of his inordinate
ambition — it is strange that such a man could
attract thousands to offer their lives for his
aggrandizement and sacrifice themselves for a
cause of which he was the exponent, a cause the
most ignoble, the extension of human slavery,
that for such a man and for such a cause thou-
sands did offer up their lives is a sad commen-
tary on the political morality of that time. It
is said that over ten thousand men joined
Walker in his filibustering schemes and that
fifty-seven hundred of these found graves in
Nicaragua. Of the number of natives killed in
battle or who died of disease, there is no record,
but it greatly exceeded Walker's losses.

While Walker was attaining some success in
Nicaragua, another California filibuster entered
die arena. This was Henry A. Crabb, a Stock-
ton lawyer. Like Walker, he was a native of
Tennessee, and, like him, too, he was a rabid
pro-slavery advocate. He had served in the
assembly and one term in the state senate. It
is said he was the author of a bill to allow slave-
holders who brought their slaves into California
before its admission to take their human chattels
back into bondage. He was originally a Whig,
but had joined the Know-Nothing party and was
a candidate of that party for United States sen-
ator in 1856; but his extreme southern princi-

ples prevented his election. He had married a
Spanish wife, who had numerous and influential
relatives in Sonora. It was claimed that Crabb
had received an invitation from some of these to
bring down an armed force of Americans to
overthrow the government and make himself
master of the country. Whether he did or did
not receive such an invitation, he did recruit a
body of men for some kind of service in Sonora.
With a force of one hundred men, well armed
with rifles and revolvers, he sailed, in January,
1857, on the steamer Sea Bird, from San Fran-
cisco to San Pedro and from there marched over-
land. As usual, no attempt was made by the
federal authorities to prevent him from invading
a neighboring country with an armed force.

He entered Sonora at Sonita, a small town
one hundred miles from Yuma. His men helped
themselves to what they could find. When ap-
proaching the town of Cavorca they were fired
upon by a force of men lying in ambush. The
fire was kept up from all quarters. They made a
rush and gained the shelter of the houses. In
the charge two of their men had been killed and
eighteen wounded. In the house they had taken
possession of they were exposed to shots from
a church. Crabb and fifteen of his men at-
tempted to blow open the doors of the church
with gunpowder, but in the attempt, which
failed, five of the men were killed, and seven,
including Crabb, wounded. After holding out
for five days they surrendered to the Mexicans,
Gabilondo, the Mexican commander, promising
to spare their lives. Next morning they were
marched out in squads of five to ten and shot.
Crabb was tied to a post and a hundred balls
fired into him; his head was cut off and placed
in a jar of mescal. The only one spared was a
boy of fifteen, Charles E. Evans. A party of
sixteen men whom Crabb had left at Sonita
was surprised and all massacred. The boy
Evans was the only one left to tell the fate of the
ill-starred expedition. This put an end to fili-
bustering expeditions into Sonora.

These armed forays on the neighboring coun-
tries to the south of the United States cea.ctt<
with the beginning of the war of secession.
They had all been made for the purpose of ac-
quiring slave territory. The leaders of them

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

were southern men and the rank and file were
mostly recruited from natives of the slave states.
Bancroft truthfully says of these filibustering
expeditions: "They were foul robberies, covered
by the flimsiest of political and social pretenses,
gilded by false aphorisms and profane distortion
of sacred formulae. Liberty dragged in the mud
for purposes of theft and human enslavement;
the cause of humanity bandied in filthy mouths
to promote atrocious butcheries; peaceful,

i:t'j

blooming valleys given over to devastation and
ruin; happy families torn asunder, and widows
and orphans cast adrift to nurse affliction; and
finally, the peace of nations imperiled, anil the
morality of right insulted. The thought of such
results should obliterate all romance, and turn
pride to shame. They remain an ineffaceable
stain upon the government of the most pr. .
sive of nations, and veil in dismal irony the
dream of manifest destiny."

CHAPTER XXIX.

FROM GOLD TO GRAIN AND FRUITS.

UNDER the Spanish and Mexican jurisdic-
tions there was but little cultivation of
the soil in California. While the gaidens
of some of the missions, and particularly those
of Santa Barbara and San Buenaventura, pre-
sented a most appetizing display of fruit and
vegetables, at the ranchos there were but mea-
ger products. Gilroy says that when he came
to the country, in 1814, potatoes were not cul-
tivated and it was a rare thing outside of the
mission gardens to find any onions or cabbages.
A few acres of wheat and a small patch of maize
or corn furnished bread, or, rather, tortillas for
a family. At the missions a thick soup made of
boiled wheat or maize and meat was the stand-
ard article of diet for the neophytes. This was
portioned out to them in the quantity of about
three pints to each person. Langsdorff, who
witnessed the distribution of soup rations to the
Indians at Santa Clara, says: "It appeared in-
comprehensible how any one could three times a
day eat so large a portion of such nourishing
food." The neophytes evidently had healthy ap-
petites. Frijoles (beans) were the staple vege-
table dish in Spanish families. These were
served up at almost every meal. The bill of
fare for a native Californian family was very
simple.

A considerable amount of wheat was raised
at the more favorably located missions. It was
not raised for export, but to feed the neophytes.

The wheat fields had to be fenced in, or perhaps
it would be more in accordance with the facts
to say that the cattle had to be fenced out. As
timber was scarce, adobe brick did duty for
fencing as well as for house building. Some-
times the low adobe walls were made high and
safe by placing on top of them a row of the
skulls of Spanish cattle with the long, curving
horns attached to them pointing outward. These
were brought from the matanzas or slaughter
corrals where there were thousands of them
lying around. It was almost impossible for
man or beast to scale such a fence.

The agricultural implements of the early Cali-
fornians were few and simple. The Mexican
plow was a forked stick with an iron point fas-
tened to the fork or branch that penetrated the
ground. It turned no furrow, but merely
scratched the surface of the ground. After sow-
ing it was a race between the weeds and the
grain. It depended on the season which w<>n.
If the season was cold and backward, so that
the seed did not sprout readily, the weeds got
the start and won out easily. And yet with such
primitive cultivation the yield was sometimes
astonishing. At the Mission San Diego the
crop of wheat one year produced one hundred
and ninety-five fold. As the agriculturist had
a large area from which to select his arable land,
only the richest soils were chosen. Before the
discovery of gold there was little or no market

200

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

for grain, and each ranchero raised only enough
for his own use. For a time there was some
trade with the Russians in grain to supply their
settlements in Alaska, but this did not continue
long.

When some of the Americans who came in
the gold rush began to turn their attention to
agriculture they greatly underrated the produc-
tiveness of the country. To men raised where
the summer rains were needed to raise a crop
it seemed impossible to produce a crop in a
country that was rainless for six or eight months
of the year. All attempts at agriculture hitherto
had been along the rivers, and it was generally
believed that the plains back from the water
courses could never be used for any other pur-
pose than cattle raising.

The mining rush of '49 found California with-
out vegetables and fresh fruit. The distance
was too great for the slow transportation of
that day to ship these into the country. Those
who first turned their attention to market gar-
dening made fortunes. The story is told of an
old German named Schwartz who had a small
ranch a few miles below Sacramento. In 1848,
when everybody was rushing to the mines, he
remained on his farm, unmoved by the stories
of the wonderful finds of gold. Anticipating a
greater rush in 1849, ne planted several acres
in watermelons. As they ripened he took them
up to the city and disposed of them at prices
ranging from $1 to $5, according to size. He
realized that season from his melons alone
$30,000. The first field of cabbages was grown
by George H. Peck and a partner in 1850. From
defective seed or some other cause the cabbage
failed to come to a head. Supposing that the
defect was in the climate and not in the cabbage,
the honest rancher marketed his crop in San
PYancisco, carrying a cabbage in each hand
along the streets until he found a customer. To
the query why there were no heads to them
the reply was, "That's the way cabbages grow
in California." He got rid of his crop at the
rate of $1 apiece for each headless cabbage.
But all the vegetable growing experiments were
not a financial success. The high price of po-
tatoes in 1849 started a tuber-growing epidemic
in 1850. Hundreds of acres were planted to

"spuds" in the counties contiguous to San
Francisco, the agriculturists paying as high as
fifteen cents per pound for seed. The yield was
enormous and the market was soon overstocked.
The growers who could not dispose of their
potatoes stacked them up in huge piles in the
fields; and there they rotted, filling the country
around with their effluvia. The next year no-
body planted potatoes, and prices went up to
the figures of '49 and the spring of '50.

The size to which vegetables grew astonished
the amateur agriculturists. Beets, when allowed
to grow to maturity, resembled the trunks of
trees; onions looked like squash, while a patch
of pumpkins resembled a tented field; and corn
grew so tall that the stalks had to be felled to
get at the ears. Onions were a favorite vege-
table in the mining camps on account of their
anti-scorbutic properties as a preventive of
scurvy. The honest miner was not fastidious
about the aroma. They were a profitable crop,
too. One ranchero in the Napa valley was re-
ported to have cleared $8,000 off two acres of
onions.

With the decline of gold mining, wheat be-
came the staple product of central California.
The nearness to shipping ports and the large
yields made wheat growing very profitable. In
the years immediately following the Civil war
the price ranged high and a fortune was some-
times made from the products of a single field.
It may be necessary to explain that the field
might contain anywhere from five hundred to
a thousand acres. The grain area was largely
extended by the discovery that land in the
upper mesas, which had been regarded as only
fit for pasture land, was good for cereals. The
land in the southern part of the state, which
was held in large grants, continued to be de-
voted to cattle raising for at least two decades
after the American conquest. After the dis-
covery of gold, cattle raising became immensely
profitable. Under the Mexican regime a steer
was worth what his hide and tallow would bring
or about $2 or $3. The rush of immigration in
1849 sent the price of cattle up until a fat bul-
lock sold for from $30 to $35. The profit to a
ranchero who had a thousand or more marketa-
ble cattle was a fortune. A good, well-stocked

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

aoi

cattle ranch was more valuable than a gold
mine.

The enormous profits in cattle raising dazed
the Californians. Had they been thrifty and
economical, they might have grown rich. But
the sudden influx of wealth engendered extrava-
gant habits and when the price of cattle fell, as
it did in a few years, the spendthrift customs
were continued. When the cattle market was
dull it was easy to raise money by mortgaging
the ranch. With interest at the rate of 5 per
cent per month, compounded monthly, it did
not take long for land and cattle both to change
hands. It is related of the former owner of
the Santa Gertrudes rancho that he borrowed
$500 from a money lender, at 5 per cent a
month, to beat a poker game, but did not suc-
ceed. Then he borrowed more money to pay
the interest on the first and kept on doing so
until interest and principal amounted to $100,-
000; then the mortgage was foreclosed and
property to-day worth $1,000,000 was lost for
a paltry $500 staked on a poker game.

Gold mining continued to be the prevailing
industry of northern California. The gold pro-
duction reached its acme in 1853, when the
total yield was $65,000,000. From that time
there was a gradual decline in production and
in the number of men employed. Many had
given up the hopes of striking it rich and quit
the business for something more certain and
less illusive. The production of gold in 1852
was $60,000,000, yet the average yield to each
man of the one hundred thousand engaged in
it was only about $600, or a little over $2 per
day to the man, scarcely living wages as prices
were then. It has been claimed that the cost of
producing the gold, counting all expenditures,
was three times the value of that produced.
Even if it did, the development of the country
and impulse given to trade throughout the
world would more than counterbalance the loss.

At the time of the discovery of gold nearly all
of'the fruit raised in California was produced at
Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. In Spanish and
Mexican days, Los Angeles had been the prin-
cipal wine-producing district of California. Al-
though wine, as well as other spirituous liquors,
were in demand, the vineyardists found it more

profitable to ship their grapes to San Francisco
than to manufacture them into wine. Grapes
retailed in the city of San Fiandsco at from
twelve and one-half to twenty-five cents a
pound. The vineyards were as profitable as
the cattle ranches. The mission Indians did the
labor in the vineyards and were paid in aguar-
diente on Saturday night. By Sunday morning
they were all drunk; then they were gathered
up and put into a corral. On Monday morning
they were sold to pay the cost of their dissipa-
tion. It did not take many years to kill off the
Indians. The city has grown over the former
sites of the vineyards.

The first orange trees were planted at the
M ission San Gabriel about the year 1S15 and
a few at Los Angeles about the same time. But
little attention was given to the industry by the
Californians. The first extensive grove was
planted by William YY'olfskill in 1840. The im-
pression then prevailed that oranges could be
grown only on the low lands near the river.
The idea of attempting to grow them on the
mesa lands was scouted at by the Californians
and the Americans. The success that attended
the Riverside experiment demonstrated that
they could be grown on the mesas, and that the
fruit produced was superior to that grown on
the river bottoms. This gave such an impetus
to the industry in the south that it has distanced
all others. The yearly shipment to the eastern
markets is twenty thousand car loads. The cit-
rus belt is extending every year.

The Californians paid but little attention to
the quality of the fruit they raised. The seed
fell in the ground and sprouted. If the twig
survived and grew to be a tree, they ate the fruit,
asking no question whether the quality might
be improved. The pears grown at the missions
and at some of the ranch houses were hard and
tasteless. It was said they never ripened. A
small black fig was cultivated in a few places,
but the quantity of fruit grown outside of the
mission gardens was very small.

The high price of all kinds of fruit in the early
'50s induced the importation of app'e. peach,
pear, plum and prune trees. These thrived and
soon supplied the demand. Before the advent
of the railroads and the shipment east the quan-

202

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tity of deciduous fruit produced had outgrown
the demand, and there was no profit in its pro-
duction. All this has been changed by eastern
shipment.

Sheep were brought to the country with the
first missionary expeditions. The Indian in his
primitive condition did not use clothing. A
coat of mud was his only garment and he was
not at all particular about the fit of that. After
his conversion the missionaries put clothing on
him, or, rather, on part of him. He was given a
shirt, which was a shirt of Nessus, being made of
the coarse woolen cloth manufactured at the
mission. It was irritating to the skin and com-
pelled the poor wretches to keep up a continual
scratching; at least, that is what Hugo Reid
tells us. During the Civil war and for several
years after, the sheep industry was very profit-
able. The subdivision of the great ranchos and
the absorption of the land for grain growing and
fruit culture have contracted the sheep ranges
until there is but little left for pasture except the
foothills that are too rough for cultivation.

Up to 1863 the great Spanish grants that cov-
ered the southern part of the state had, with a
few exceptions, been held intact and cattle rais-
ing had continued to be the principal industry.
For several seasons previous to the famine years
of 1863 and 1864 there had been heavy rainfalls
and consequently feed was abundant. With the
price of cattle declining, the rancheros over-
stocked their ranges to make up by quantity for
decrease in value. When the dry year of
1863 set in, the feed on ranches was soon ex-
hausted and the cattle starving. The second
famine year following, the cattle industry was
virtually wiped out of existence and the cattle-
owners ruined. In Santa Barbara, where
the cattle barons held almost imperial sway,
and, with their army of retainers, controlled the
political affairs of the county, of the two hun-
dred thousand cattle listed on the assessment
roll of 1862, only five thousand were alive when
grass grew in 1865. On the Stearns' ranchos in
Los Angeles county, one hundred thousand
head of cattle and horses perished, and the
1 iwner of a quarter million acres and a large
amount of city property could not raise money
enough to pay his taxes.

Many of the rancheros were in debt when the
hard times came, and others mortgaged their
land at usurious rates of interest to carry them
through the famine years. Their cattle dead,
they had no income to meet the interest on the
cancerous mortgage that was eating up their
patrimony. The result was that they were com-
pelled either to sell their land or the mortgage
was foreclosed and they lost it. This led to the
subdivision of the large grants into small hold-
ings, the new proprietors finding that there was
more profit in selling them off in small tracts
than in large ones. This brought in an intelli-
gent and progressive population, and in a few
years entirely revolutionized the agricultural
conditions of the south. Grain growing and
fruit raising became the prevailing industries.
The adobe ranch house with its matanzas and
its Golgotha of cattle skulls and bones gave
place to the tasty farm house with its flower
garden, lawn and orange grove.

The Californians paid but little attention to
improving the breed of their cattle. When the
only value in an animal was the hide and tallow,
it did not pay to. improve the breed. The hide
of a long-horned, mouse-colored Spanish steer
would sell for as much as that of a high-bred
Durham or Holstein, and, besides, the first
could exist where the latter would starve to
death. After the conquest there was for some
time but little improvement. Cattle were brought
across the plains, but for the most part these
were the mongrel breeds of the western states
and were but little improvement on the Spanish
stock. It was not until the famine years vir-
tually exterminated the Spanish cattle that bet-
ter breeds were introduced.

As with cattle, so also it was with horses.
Little attention was given to improving the
breed. While there were a few fine race horses
and saddle horses in the country before its
American occupation, the prevailing equine was
the mustang. He was a vicious beast, nor was
it strange that his temper was bad. He had to
endure starvation and abuse that would have
killed a more aristocratic animal. He took care
of himself, subsisted on what he could pick up
and to the best of his ability resented ill treat-
ment. Horses during the Mexican regime were

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

203

used only for riding. Oxen were the draft ani-
mals. The mustang had one inherent trait that
did not endear him to an American, and that
was his propensity to "buck." With his nose
between his knees, his back arched and his legs
stiffened, by a series of short, quick jumps, he
could dismount an inexperienced rider with
neatness and dispatch. The Californian took
delight in urging the bronco to "buck" so that
he (the rider) might exhibit his skillful horse-
manship. The mustang had some commenda-
ble traits as well. He was sure-footed as a goat
and could climb the steep hillsides almost equal
; to that animal. He had an easy gait under the
saddle and could measure off mile after mile
without a halt. His power of endurance was
! wonderful. He could live off the country when
1 apparently there was nothing to subsist on ex-
j cept the bare ground. He owed mankind a debt
of ingratitude which he always stood ready to
\ pay when an opportunity offered. The passing
; of the mustang began with the advent of the
American farmer.

The founding of agricultural colonies began
' in the '50s. One of the first, if not the first, was
; the German colony of Anaheim, located thirty
I miles south of Los Angeles. A company of
\ Germans organized in San Francisco in 1857
for the purpose of buying land for the cultiva-
tion of the wine grape and the manufacture of
; wine. The organization was a stock company.
Eleven hundred acres were purchased in a
Spanish grant. This was subdivided into twenty
and forty acre tracts; an irrigating ditcli
brought in from the Santa Ana river. A por-
tion of each subdivision was planted in vines
and these were cultivated by the company until
they came into bearing, when the tracts were
divided among the stockholders by lot, a cer-
tain valuation being fixed on each tract. The
man obtaining a choice lot paid into the fund
a certain amount and the one receiving an infe-
rior tract received a certain amount, so that each
received the same value in the distribution. The
colony proved quite a success, and for thirty
years Anaheim was one of the largest wine-
producing districts in the United States. In
1887 a mysterious disease destroyed all the vines
and the vineyardists turned their attention

to the cultivation of oranges and English
walnuts.

The Riverside colony, then in San Bernardino
county, now in Riverside county, was founded
in 1870. The projectors of the colony were
eastern gentlemen. At the head of the organiza-
tion was Judge J. W. North. They purchased
four thousand acres uf the Roubidoux or Jurupa
rancho and fourteen hundred and sixty acres of
government land from the California Silk Cen-
ter Association. This association had been or-
ganized in 1869 for the purpose of founding a
colony to cultivate mulberry trees and manu-
facture silk. It had met with reverses, first in
the death of its president, Louis Prevost. a man
skilled in the silk business, next in the revoca-
tion by the legislature of the bounty for mul-
berry plantations, and lastly in the subsidence
of the sericulture craze. To encourage silk cul-
ture in California, the legislature, in 1866, passed
an act authorizing the payment of a bounty of
$250 for every plantation of live thousand mul-
berry trees two years old. This greatly stimu-
lated the planting of mulberry trees, if it did
not greatly increase the production of silk. In
1869 it was estimated that in the central and
southern portions of the state there wire ten
millions of mulberry trees in various stages of
growth. Demands for the bounty poured in
upon the commissioners in such numbers that
the state treasury was threatened with bank-
ruptcy. The revocation of the bounty killed
the silk worms and the mulberry trees; and
those who had been attacked with the sericulture
craze quickly recovered. The Silk Center As-
sociation, having fallen into hard lines, offered
its lands for sale at advantageous terms, and in
September, 1870, they were purchased by the
Southern California Colony Association. The
land was bought at $3.50 per acre. It was mesa
or table land that had never been cultivated.
It was considered by old-timers indifferent sheep
pasture, and Roubidoux. it is said, had it struck
from the tax roll because it was not worth tax-
ing.

The company had the land subdivided and
laid off a town which was first named Jurupa.
but afterwards the name was changed to River-
side. The river, the Santa Ana. did not flow

'20i

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

past the town, but the colonists hoped to make
a goodly portion of its waters do so. The lands
were put on sale at reasonable prices, a ditch
at a cost of $50,000 was constructed. Experi-
ments were made with oranges, raisin grapes
and deciduous fruits, but the colony finally set-
tled down to orange producing. In 1873 the
introduction of the Bahia or navel orange gave
an additional impetus to orange growing in the
colony, the fruit of that species being greatly
superior to any other. This fruit was propa-
gated by budding from two trees received from
Washington, D. C, by J. A. Tibbetts, of River-
side.

The Indiana colony, which later became Pasa-
dena, was founded in 1873 by some gentlemen
from Indiana. Its purpose was the growing of
citrus fruits and raisin grapes, but it has grown
into a city, and the orange groves, once the
pride of the colony, have given place to business
blocks and stately residences.

During the early '70s a number of agricul-
tural colonies were founded in Fresno county.
These were all fruit-growing and raisin-pro-
ducing enterprises. They proved successful and
Fresno has become the largest raisin-pro-
ducing district in the state.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE CIVIL WAR— LOYALTY AND DISLOYALTY.

THE admission of California into the Union
as a free state did not, in the opinion of
the ultra pro-slavery faction, preclude the
possibility of securing a part of its territory for
the "peculiar institution" of the south. The
question of state division which had come up
in the constitutional convention was again agi-
tated. The advocates of division hoped to cut
off from the southern part, territory enough for
a new state. The ostensible purpose of division
was kept concealed. The plea of unjust taxa-
tion was made prominent. The native Califor-
nians who under Mexican rule paid no taxes on
their land were given to understand that they
were bearing an undue proportion of the cost
of government, while the mining counties, pay-
ing less tax, had the greater representation. The
native Californians were opposed to slavery, an
open advocacy of the real purpose would defeat
the division scheme.

The leading men in the southern part of the
state were from the slave states. If the state
were divided, the influence of these men would
carry the new state into the Union with a con-
stitution authorizing slave-holding and thus the
south would gain two senators. The division
question came up in some form in nearly every
session of the legislature for a decade after Cali-
fornia became a state.

In the legislature of 1854-55, Jefferson Hunt,
of San Bernardino county, introduced a bill in
the assembly to create and establish, "out of
the territory embraced within the limits of the
state of California, a new state, to be called the
state of Columbia." The territory embraced
within the counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara,
San Joaquin, Calaveras, Amador, Tuolumne,
Stanislaus, Mariposa, Tulare, Monterey, Santa
Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Los Angeles, San
Bernardino and San Diego, with the islands on
the coast, were to constitute the new state.
"The people residing within the above mentioned
territory shall be and they are hereby author-
ized, so soon as the consent of the congress of
the United States shall be obtained thereto, to
proceed to organize a state government under
such rules as are prescribed by the constitution
of the United States." The bill was referred to
a select committee of thirteen members repre-
senting different sections of the state. This
committee reported as a substitute, "An Act to
create three states out of the territory of Cali-
fornia," and also drafted an address to the peo-
ple of California advocating the passage of the
act. The eastern boundary line of California
was to be moved over the mountains to the one
hundred and nineteenth degree of longitude west
of Greenwich, which would have taken about

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

half of the present state of Nevada. The north-
ern state was to be called Shasta, the central
California and the southern Colorado.

The southern boundary of the state of Shasta
began at the mouth of Maron's river ; thence
easterly along the boundary line between Yerba
and Butte counties and between Sierra and Plu-
mas to the summit of the Sierra Nevadas and
thence easterly to the newly established state line.

The northern boundary of the state of Colo-
rado began at the mouth of the Pajara river,
running up that river to the summit of the
Coast Range ; thence in a straight line to the
mouth of the Merced river, thence up that river
to the summits of the Sierra Nevadas and then
due east to the newly established state line.

The territory not embraced in the states of
Colorado and Shasta was to constitute the state
of California.

The taxable property of Shasta for the year
1854 was $7,000,000 and the revenue $100,000;
that of Colorado $9,764,000 and the revenue
$186,000. These amounts the committee consid-
ered sufficient to support the state governments.
The bill died on the files.

The legislature of 1859 was intensely pro-
slavery. The divisionists saw in it an oppor-
tunity to carry out their long-deferred scheme.
The so-called Pico law, an act granting the
consent of the legislature to the formation of a
different government for the southern counties
of this state, was introduced early in the ses-
sion, passed in both houses and approved by
the governor April 18, 1859. The boundaries
of the proposed state were as follows: "All of
that part or portion of the present territory of
this state lying all south of a line drawn east-
ward from the west boundary of the state along
the sixth standard parallel south of the Mount
Diablo meridian, east to the summit of the
coast range; thence southerly following said
summit to the seventh standard parallel; thence
due east on said standard, parallel to its inter-
section with the northwest boundary of Los
Angeles county; thence northeast along said
boundary to the eastern boundary of the state,
including the counties of San Luis Obispo,
Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Diego, San
Bernardino and a part of Buena Vista, shall be

segregated from the remaining portion of the
state for the purpose of the formation by con-
gress, with the concurrent action of said portion
(the consent for the segregation of which is
hereby granted), of a territorial or other gov-
ernment under the name of the '"Territory of
Colorado," or such other name as may be
deemed meet and proper."

Section second provided for the submitting
the question of "For a Territory" or "'Against
a Territory" to the people of the portion sought
to be segregated at the next general election;
"and in case two-thirds of the whole number of
voters voting thereon shall vote for a change of
government, the consent hereby given shall be
deemed consummated." In case the vote v. ;i>
favorable the secretary of state was to send a
certified copy of the result of the election ami
a copy of the act annexed to the president of
the United States and to the senators and rep-
resentatives of California in congress. At the
general election in September, 1859, the ques-
tion was submitted to a vote of the people of
the southern counties, with the following result:

For. Against.

Los Angeles county 1.407 441

San Bernardino 441 29

San Diego 207 24

San Luis Obispo 10 2S3

Santa Barbara 395 51

Tulare 17 ...

Total 2.477 828

The bill to create the county of Buena Vista
from the southern portion of Tulare failed to
pass the legislature, hence the name of that
county does not appear in the returns. The
result of the vote showed that considerably more
than two-thirds were in favor of a new state.

The results of this movement for division and
the act were sent to the president and to con-
gress, but nothing came of it. The pro-slavery
faction which with the assistance of its coad-
jutors of the north had so long dominated con-
gress had lost its power. The southern senators
and congressmen were preparing for recession
and had weightier matters to think of than the
division of the state of California. Of late years,
a few feeble attempts have been made to stir up

200

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the old question of state division and even to
resurrect the old "Pico law."

For more than a decade after its admission
into the Union, California was a Democratic
state and controlled by the pro-slavery wing of
that party. John C. Fremont and William H.
Gwin, its first senators, were southern born,
Fremont in South Carolina and Gwin in Ten-
nessee. Politics had not entered into their
election, but the lines were soon drawn. Fre-
mont drew the short term and his services in
the senate were very brief. He confidently
expected a re-election, but in this he was
doomed to disappointment. The legislature of
1 85 1, after balloting one hundred and forty-two
times, adjourned without electing, leaving Cali-
fornia with but one senator in the session of
1850-51. In the legislature of 1852 John B.
Wilier was elected. He was a northern man
with southern principles. His chief opponent
for the place was David Colbert Broderick, a
man destined to fill an important place in the
political history of California. He was an Irish-
man by birth, but had come to America in his
boyhood. He had learned the stone cutters'
trade with his father. His early associations
were with the rougher element of New York
City. Aspiring to a higher position than that
of a stone cutter he entered the political field
and soon arose to prominence. At the age of
26 he was nominated for Congress, but was de-
feated by a small majority through a split in the
party. In 1849 ne came to California, where he
arrived sick and penniless. With F. D. Kohler,
an assayer, he engaged in coining gold. The
profit from buying gold dust at $14 an ounce
and making it into $5 and $10 pieces put him
in affluent circumstances.

His first entry into politics in California was
his election to fill a vacancy in the senate of the
first legislature. In 1851 he became president
of the senate. He studied law, history and liter-
ature and was admitted to the bar. He was ap-
pointed clerk of the supreme court and had as-
pirations for still higher positions. Although
Senator Gwin was a Democrat, he had managed
to control all the federal appointments of Fill-
more, the Whig president, and he had filled the
offices with pro-slavery Democrats.

No other free state in the Union had such
odious laws against negroes as had California.
The legislature of 1852 enacted a law "respect-
ing fugitives from labor and slaves brought to
this state prior to her admission to the Union."
"Under this law a colored man or woman could
be brought before a magistrate, claimed as a
slave, and the person so seized not being per-
mitted to testify, the judge had no alternative
but to issue a certificate to the claimant, which
certificate was conclusive of the right of the per-
son or persons in whose favor granted, and pre-
vented all molestation of such person or per-
sons, by any process issued by any court, judge,
justice or magistrate or other person whomso-
ever."* Any one who rendered assistance to a
fugitive was liable to a fine of $500 or imprison-
ment for two months. Slaves who had been
brought into California by their masters before
it became a state, but who were freed by the
adoption of a constitution prohibiting slavery,
were held to be fugitives and were liable to
arrest, although they had been free for several
years and some of them had accumulated con-
siderable property. By limitation the law should
have become inoperative in 1853, but the legis-
lature of that year re-enacted it, and the suc-
ceeding legislatures of 1854 and 1855 continued
it in force. The intention of the legislators
who enacted the law was to legalize the kid-
napping of free negroes, as well as the arrest of
fugitives. Broderick vigorously opposed the
prosecution of the colored people and by so
doing called down upon his head the wrath of
the pro-slavery chivalry. From that time on he
was an object of their hatred. While successive
legislatures were passing laws to punish black
men for daring to assert their freedom and their
right to the products of their honest toil, white
villains were rewarded with political preferment,
provided always that they belonged to the domi-
nant wing of the Democratic party. The Whig
party was but little better than the other, for the
same element ruled in both. The finances of
the state were in a deplorable condition and
continually growing worse. The people's money
was recklessly squandered. Incompetency was

*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. VI.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

207

the rule in office and honesty the exception.
Ballot box stuffing had been reduced to a me-
chanical science, jury bribing was one of the
i fine arts and suborning perjury was a recognized
profession. During one election in San Fran-
cisco it was estimated that $1,500,000 was spent
in one way or another to influence voters. Such
was the state of affairs just preceding the up-
rising of the people that evolved in San Fran-
cisco the vigilance committee of 1856.

At the state election in the fall of 1855 the
Know Nothings carried the state. The native
American or Know Nothing party was a party
of few principles. Opposition to Catholics and
foreigners was about the only plank in its plat-
form. There was a strong opposition to for-
eign miners in the mining districts and the
pro-slavery faction saw in the increased foreign
immigration danger to the extension of their
beloved institution into new territory. The
most potent cause of the success of the new
party in California was the hope that it might
bring reform to relieve the tax burdened people.
But in this they were disappointed. It was made
up from the same element that had so long mis-
governed the state.

The leaders of the party were either pro-
slavery men of the south or northern men with
southern principles. Of the latter class was J.
Neely Johnson, the governor-elect. In the leg-
islature of 1855 the contest between Gwin and
Broderick, which had been waged at the polls
the previous year, culminated after thirty-eight
ballots in no choice and Gwin's place in the
senate became vacant at the expiration of his
term. In the legislature of 1856 the Know Noth-
ings had a majority in both houses. It was
supposed that they would elect a senator to
succeed Gwin. There were three aspirants: H.
A. Crabb, formerly a Whig; E. C. Marshall and
Henry S. Foote, formerly Democrats. All were
southerners and were in the new party for of-
fice. The Gwin and Broderick influence was
strong enough to prevent the Know Nothing
legislature from electing a senator and Califor-
nia was left with but one representative in the
upper house of Congress.

The Know Nothing party was short lived. At
the general election in 1856 the Democrats

swept the state. Broderick, by his ability in or-
ganizing and his superior leadership, had se-
cured a majority in the legislature and was in a
position to dictate terms to his opponents. Wri-
ter's senatorial term would souii expire and
Gwin's already two years vacant left two places
to be filled. Broderick, who had heretofore
been contending for Gwin's place, changed his
tactics and aspired to fill the long term. Ac-
cording to established custom, the filling of the
vacancy would come up first, but Broderick, by
superior finesse, succeeded in having the caucus
nominate the successor to Weller first. Ex-
Congressman Latham's friends were induced to
favor the arrangement on the expectation that
their candidate would be given the short term.
Broderick was elected to the long term on the
first ballot, January 9, 1857, and his commi.s>i.»n
was immediately made out and signed by the
governor. For years he had bent his energies
to securing the senatorship and at last he had
obtained the coveted honor. But he was noi
satisfied yet. He aspired to control the federal
patronage of the state; in this way he could
reward his friends. He could dictate the elec-
tion of his colleague for the short term. Both
Gwin and Latham were willing to concede to
him that privilege for the sake of an election.
Latham tried to make a few reservations for
some of his friends to whom he had promised
places. Gwin offered to surrender it all with-
out reservation. He had had enough of it.
Gwin was elected and next day published an
address, announcing his obligation to Brodericll
and renouncing any claim to the distribution of
the federal patronage.

Then a wail long and loud went up from the
chivalry, who for years had monopolized all the
offices. That they, southern gentlemen of aris-
tocratic antecedents, should be compelled to ask
favors of a mudsill of the north was too hu-
miliating to be borne. Latham, too, was indig-
nant and Broderick found that his triumph was
but a hollow mockery. But the worst was to
come. He who had done so much to unite the
warring Democracy and give the party a glo-
rious victory in California at the presidential
election of 1856 fully expected the approbation
of President Buchanan, but when he called o«»

208

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

that old gentleman he was received coldly and
during Buchanan's administration he was ig-
nored and Gwin's advice taken and followed in
making federal appointments. He returned to
California in April, 1857, to secure the nomina-
tion of his friends on the state ticket, but in
this he was disappointed. The Gwin ele-
ment was in the ascendency and John
B. Weller received the nomination for gov-
ernor. He was regarded as a martyr, having
been tricked out of a re-election to the sen-
ate by Broderick. There were other martyrs of
the Democracy, who received balm for their
wounds and sympathy for their sufferings at
that convention. In discussing a resolution de-
nouncing the vigilance committee, O'Meara in
his "History of Early Politics in California,"
says: "Col. Joseph P. Hoge, the acknowledged
leader of the convention, stated that the com-
mittee had hanged four men, banished twenty-
eight and arrested two hundred and eighty; and
that these were nearly all Democrats.

On Broderick's return to the senate in the
session of 1857-58, he cast his lot with Senator
Douglas and opposed the admission of Kansas
under the infamous Lecompton constitution.
This cut him loose from the administration
wing of the party.

In the state campaign of 1859 Broderick ral-
lied his followers under the Anti-Lecompton
standard and Gwin his in support of the Bu-
chanan administration. The party was hope-
lessly divided. Two Democratic tickets were
placed in the field. The Broderick ticket, with
John Currey as governor, and the Gwin, with
Milton Latham, the campaign was bitter. Brod-
erick took the stump and although not an orator
his denunciations of Gwin were scathing and
merciless and in his fearful earnestness he be-
came almost eloquent. Gwin in turn loosed
the vials of his wrath upon Broderick and
criminations and recriminations flew thick and
fast during the campaign. It was a campaign
of vituperation, but the first aggressor was
Gwin.

Judge Terry, in a speech before the Lecomp-
ton convention at Sacramento in June, 1859,
after flinging out sneers at the Republican party,
characterized Broderick's party as sailing "under

the flag of Douglas, but it is the banner of the
black Douglass, whose name is Frederick, not
Stephen." This taunt was intended to arouse
the wrath of Broderick. He read Terry's speech
while seated at breakfast in the International
hotel at San Francisco. Broderick denounced
Terry's utterance in forcible language and
closed by saying: "I have hitherto spoken of
him as an honest man, as the only honest
man on the bench of a miserable, corrupt su-
preme court, but now I find I was mistaken. I
take it all back." A lawyer by the name of Per-
ley, a friend of Terry's, to whom the remark was
directed, to obtain a little reputation, challenged
Broderick. Broderick refused to consider Per-
ley's challenge on the ground that he was not
his (Broderick's) equal in standing and beside
that he had declared himself a few days before
a British subject. Perley did not stand very
high in the community. Terry had acted as a
second for him in a duel a few years before.

Broderick, in his reply to Perley, said: "I
have determined to take no notice of attacks
from any source during the canvass. If I were
to accept your challenge, there are probably
many other gentlemen who would seek similar
opportunities for hostile meetings for the pur-
pose of accomplishing a political object or to
obtain public notoriety. I cannot afford at the
present time to descend to a violation of the
Constitution and state laws to subserve either
their or your purposes."

Terry a few days after the close of the cam-
paign sent a letter to Broderick demanding a
retraction of the offensive remarks. Broderick,
well knowing that he would have to fight some
representative of the chivalry if not several of
them in succession, did not retract his remarks,
He had for several years, in expectation of such
a result in a contest with them, practiced
himself in the use of fire arms until he had be-
come quite expert.

A challenge followed, a meeting was arranged
to take place in San Mateo county, ten miles
from San Francisco, on the 12th of September.
Chief of Police Burke appeared on the scene
and arrested the principals. They were released
by the court, no crime having been committed.
They met next morning at the same place; ex-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

209

Congressman McKibben and David D. Colton
were Broderick's seconds. Calhoun Benham
and Thomas Hayes were Terry's. The pistols
selected belonged to a friend of Terry's. Brod-
erick was ill, weak and nervous, and it was said
that his pistol was quicker on the trigger than
Terry's. When the word was given it was dis-
charged before it reached a level and the ball
struck the earth, nine feet from where he stood.
Terry fired, striking Broderick in the breast.
He sank to the earth mortally wounded and died
three days afterwards. Broderick dead was a
greater man than Broderick living. For years
he had waged a contest against the representa-
tives of the slave oligarchy in California and the
great mass of the people had looked on with
indifference, even urging on his pursuers to the
tragic end. Now that he was killed, the cry went
up for vengeance on his murderers. Terry was
arrested and admitted to bail in the sum of
$10,000. The trial was put off on some pretext
and some ten months later he obtained a change
of venue to Marin county on the plea that he
could not obtain a fair and impartial trial in San
Francisco. His case was afterwards dismissed
without trial by a pro-slavery judge named
Hardy. Although freed by the courts he was
found guilty and condemned by public opinion.
He went south and joined the Confederates at
the breaking out of the Civil war. He some
time after the close of the war returned to Cal-
ifornia. In 1880 he was a presidential elector
on the Democratic ticket. His colleagues on
the ticket were elected, but he was defeated.
He was killed at Lathrop by a deputy United
States marshal while attempting an assault on
United States Supreme Judge Field.

In the hue and cry that was raised on the
death of Broderick, the chivalry read the doom
of their ascendency. Gwin, as he was about to
take the steamer on his return to Washington,
"had flaunted in his face a large canvas frame,
■on which was painted a portrait of Broderick
and this: 'It is the will of the people that the
murderers of Broderick do not return again to
California;' and below were also these words
attributed to Mr. Broderick: 'They have killed
me because I was opposed to the extension of
slavery, and a corrupt administration.' "

Throughout his political career Broderick was
a consistent anti-slavery man and a friend of
the common people. Of all the politicians of the
ante-bellum period, that is, before the Civil war,
he stands to-day the highest in the estimation of
the people of California. Like Lincoln, he was
a self-made man. From a humble origin,
unaided, he had fought his way up to a lofty po-
sition. Had he been living during the war
against the perpetuity of human slavery, he
would have been a power in the senate or pos-
sibly a commander on the field of battle. As it
was, during that struggle in his adopted state,
his name became a synonyn of patriotism ami
love for the Union.

Milton S. Latham, who succeeded John B.
Weller as governor in i860, was, like his pred-
ecessor, a northern man with southern prin-
ciples. Almost from the date of his arrival in
California he had been an office-holder. He was
a man of mediocre ability. He was a state di-
visionist and would have aided in that scheme
by advocating in the senate of the United States
(to which body he had been elected three days
after his inauguration) the segregation of the
southern counties and their formation into a
new state with the hopes of restoring t lie equi-
librium between the north and the south. But
the time had passed for such projects. The
lieutenant-governor, John G. Downey, suc-
ceeded Latham. Downey gained great popu-
larity by his veto of the "bulkhead bill." This
was a scheme of the San Francisco Dock and
Wharf Company to build a stone bulkhead
around the city water front in consideration of
having the exclusive privilege of collecting
wharfage and tolls for fifty years. Downey lost
much of his popularity, particularly with the
Union men, during the Civil war on account of
his sympathy with the Confederates.

At the state election in September, l86l, Ice-
land Stanford was chosen governor. He was
the first Republican chosen to that office. He
received fifty-six thousand votes. Two years
before he had been a candidate for that office
and received only ten thousand votes, so rap-
idlv had public sentiment changed. The DCWI
of the firing upon Fort Sumter reached San
Francisco April 24. twelve days after its oc-

•210

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

currence. It came by pony express. The be-
ginning of hostilities between the north and the
south stirred up a strong Union sentiment. The
great Union mass meeting held in San Fran-
cisco May II, 1861, was the largest and most
enthusiastic public demonstration ever held on
the Pacific coast. The lines were sharply drawn
between the friends of the government and its
enemies. Former political alliances were for-
gotten. Most of the Anti-Lecompton or Doug-
las Democrats arrayed themselves on the side
of the Union. The chivalry wing of the Dem-
ocratic party were either open or secret sym-
pathizers with the Confederates. Some of them
were bold and outspoken in their disloyalty.
The speech of Edmund Randolph at the Dem-
ocratic convention July 24, 1861, is a sample
of such utterances. * * * "To me it seems
a waste of time to talk. For God's sake, tell
me of battles fought and won. Tell me of
usurpers overthrown; that Missouri is again a
free state, no longer crushed under the armed
heel of a reckless and odious despot. Tell me
that the state of Maryland lives again; and, oh!
gentlemen, let us read, let us hear, at the first
moment, that not one hostile foot now treads
the soil of Virginia! (Applause and cheers.)
If this be rebellion, I am a rebel. Do you want
a traitor, then I am a traitor. For God's sake,
speed the ball; may the lead go quick to his
heart, and may our country be free from the
despot usurper that now claims the name
of the president of the United States."* (Cheers.)
Some of the chivalry Democrats, most of whom
had been holding office in California for years,
went south at the breaking out of the war to
fight in the armies of the Confederacy, and
among these was Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston,
who had been superseded in the command of
the Pacific Department by Gen. Edwin V. Sum-
ner. Johnston, with a number of fellow sym-
pathizers, went south by the overland route and
was killed a year later, at the battle of Shiloh,
while in command of the Confederate army.

One form of disloyalty among the class
known as "copperheads" (northern men with
southern principles) was the advocacy of a Pa-

cific republic. Most prominent among these
was ex-Governor John B. Weller. The move-
ment was a thinly disguised method of aiding
the southern Confederacy. The flag of the
inchoate Pacific republic was raised in Stock-
ton January 16, 1861. It is thus described by
the Stockton Argus: "The flag is of silk of the
medium size of the national ensign and with
the exception of the Union (evidently a mis-
nomer in this case) which contains a lone star
upon a blue ground, is covered by a painting
representing a wild mountain scene, a huge
grizzly bear standing in the foreground and the
words 'Pacific Republic' near the upper border."
The flag raising was not a success. At first it
was intended to raise it in the city. But as it
became evident this would not be allowed, it was
raised to the mast head of a vessel in the slough.
It was not allowed to float there long. The hal-
yards were cut and a boy was sent up the mast
to pull it down. The owner of the flag was con-
vinced that it was not safe to trifle with the
loyal sentiment of the people.

At the gubernatorial election in September,
1863, Frederick F. Low, Republican, was
chosen over John G. Downey, Democrat, by a
majority of over twenty thousand. In some parts
of the state Confederate sympathizers were
largely in the majority. This was the case in
Los Angeles and in some places in the San
Joaquin valley. Several of the most outspoken
were arrested and sent to Fort Alcatraz, where
they soon became convinced of the error of
their ways and took the oath of allegiance.
When the news of the assassination of Lincoln
reached San Francisco, a mob destroyed the
newspaper plants of the Democratic Press,
edited by Beriah Brown ; the Occidental, edited
by Zach. Montgomery ; the Nczvs Letter, edited
by F. Marriott, and the Monitor, a Catholic
paper, edited by Thomas A. Brady. These were
virulent copperhead sheets that had heaped
abuse upon the martyred president. Had the
proprietors of these journals been found the
mob would, in the excitement that prevailed,
have treated them with violence. After this
demonstration Confederate sympathizers kept
silent.

*TuthiH's History of California.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

- 1 1

CHAPTER XXXI.

TRADE, TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION.

THE beginning of the ocean commerce of
California was the two mission transport
ships that came every year to bring sup-
plies tor the missions and presidios and take
back what few products there were to send.
The government fixed a price upon each and
every article of import and export. There was
no cornering the market, no bulls or bears in
the wheat pit, no rise or fall in prices except
when ordered by royal authority. An Arancel
de Precios (fixed rate of prices) was issued at
certain intervals, and all buying and selling was
governed accordingly. These arancels included
everything in the range of human needs — phys-
ical, spiritual or mental. According to a tariff
of prices promulgated by Governor Fages in
1788, which had been approved by the audencia
and had received the royal sanction, the price
of a Holy Christ in California was fixed at
$1.75, a wooden spoon six cents, a horse $9, a
deerskin twenty-five cents, red pepper eighteen
cents a pound, a dozen of quail twenty-five
cents, brandy seventy-five cents per pint, and
so on throughout the list.

In 1785 an attempt was made to open up
trade between California and China, the com-
modities for exchange being seal and otter
skins for quicksilver. The trade in peltries was
to be a government monopoly. The skins were
to be collected from the natives by the mission
friars, who were to sell them to a government
agent at prices ranging from $2.50 to $10 each.
The neophytes must give up to the friars all
the skins in their possession. All trade by citi-
zens or soldiers was prohibited and any one
attempting to deal in peltries otherwise than
the regularly ordained authorities was liable, if
found out, to have his goods confiscated.
Spain's attempt to engage in the fur trade was
not a success. The blighting monopoly of
church and state nipped it in the bud. It died

out, and the government bought quicksilver,
on which also it had a monopoly, with coin in-
stead of otter skins.

After the government abandoned the fur trade
the American smugglers began to gather up
the peltries, and the California producer re-
ceived better prices for his furs than the mis-
sionaries paid.

The Yankee smuggler had no arancel of
prices fixed by royal edict. His price list va-
ried according to circumstances. As his trade
was illicit and his vessel and her cargo were in
danger of confiscation if he was caught, his scale
of prices ranged high. But he paid a higher
price for the peltries than the government, and
that was a consolation to the seller. The com-
merce with the Russian settlements of the
northwest in the early years of the century fur-
nished a limited market for the grain produced
at some of the missions, but the Russians
helped themselves to the otter and the seal of
California without saying "By your leave" and
they were not welcome visitors.

During the Mexican revolution, as has been
previously mentioned, trade sprang up between
Lima and California in tallow, but it was of
short duration. During the Spanish era it can
hardly be said that California had any com-
merce. Foreign vessels were not allowed to
enter her ports except when in distress, and
their stay was limited to the shortest time pos-
sible required to make repairs and take on
supplies.

It was not until Mexico gained her inde-
pendence and removed the prescriptive regu-
lations with which Spain had hampered com-
merce that the hide droghers opened up trade
between New England and California. This
trade, which began in 1822. grew to consider-
able proportions. The hide droghers were emi-
grant ships as well as mercantile vessels. By

212

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

these came most of the Americans who settled
in California previous to 1840. The hide and
tallow trade, the most important item of com-
merce in the Mexican era, reached its maximum
in 1834, when the great mission herds were, by
order of the padres, slaughtered to prevent them
from falling into the hands of the government
commissioners. Thirty-two vessels came to the
coast that year, nearly all of which were en-
gaged in the hide and tallow trade.

During the year 1845, tne last of Mexican
rule, sixty vessels visited the coast. These
were not all trading vessels; eight were men-
of-war, twelve were whalers and thirteen came
on miscellaneous business. The total amount
received at the custom house for revenue during
that year was $140,000. The majority of the
vessels trading on the California coast during
the Mexican era sailed under the stars and
stripes. Mexico was kinder to California than
Spain, and under her administration commer-
cial relations were established to a limited ex-
tent with foreign nations. Her commerce at
best was feeble and uncertain. The revenue laws
and their administration were frequently
changed, and the shipping merchant was never
sure what kind of a reception his cargo would
receive from the custom house officers. The
duties on imports from foreign countries were
exorbitant and there was always more or less
smuggling carried on. The people and the
padres, when they were a power, gladly wel-
comed the arrival of a trading vessel on the
coast and were not averse to buying goods that
had escaped the tariff if they could do so with
safety. As there was no land tax, the revenue
on goods supported the expenses of the govern-
ment.

Never in the world's history did any country
develop an ocean commerce so quickly as did
California after the discovery of gold. When
the news spread abroad, the first ships to
arrive came from Peru, Chile and the South
Sea islands. The earliest published notice of
the gold discovery appeared in the Baltimore
Sun, September 20, 1848, eight months after it
was made. At first the story was ridiculed, but
as confirmatory reports came thick and fast,
preparations began for a grand rush for the

gold mines. Vessels of all kinds, seaworthy
and unseaworthy, were overhauled and fitted
out for California. The American trade with
California had gone by way of Cape Horn or
the Straits of Magellan, and this was the route
that was taken by the pioneers. Then there
were short cuts by the way of the Isthmus of
Panama, across Mexico and by Nicaragua. The
first vessels left the Atlantic seaports in No-
vember, 1848. By the middle of the winter one
hundred vessels had sailed from Atlantic and
Gulf seaports, and by spring one hundred and
fifty more had taken their departure, all of them
loaded with human freight and with supplies of
every description. Five hundred and forty-
nine vessels arrived in San Francisco in nine
months, forty-five reaching that port in one day.

April 12, 1848, before the treaty of peace
with Mexico had been proclaimed by the Presi-
dent, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was
incorporated with a capital of $500,000. Asto-
ria, Ore., was to have been the Pacific terminus
of the company's line, but it never got there.
The discovery of gold in California made San
Francisco the end of its route. The contract
with the government gave the company a sub-
sidy of $200,000 for maintaining three steamers
on the Pacific side between Panama and Asto-
ria. The first of these vessels, the California,
sailed from New York October 6, 1848, for San
Francisco and Astoria via Cape Horn. She
was followed in the two succeeding months by
the Oregon and the Panama. On the Atlantic
side the vessels of the line for several years
were the Ohio, Illinois and Georgia. The ves-
sels on the Atlantic side were fifteen hundred
tons burden, while those on the Pacific were a
thousand tons. Freight and passengers by the
Panama route were transported across the isth-
mus by boats up the Chagres river to Gorgona,
and then by mule-back to Panama. In 1855 the
Panama railroad was completed. This greatly
facilitated travel and transportation. The At-
lantic terminus of the road was Aspinwall, now
called Colon.

Another line of travel and commerce between
the states and California in early days was the
Nicaragua route. By that route passengers on
the Atlantic side landed at San Juan del Norte

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

or Greytown. From there they took a river
steamer and ascended the Rio San Juan to Lake
Nicaragua, then in a larger vessel they crossed
the lake to La Virgin. From there a distance
of about twelve miles was made on foot or on
mule-back to San Juan del Sur, where they re-
embarked on board the ocean steamer for San
Francisco.

The necessity for the speedy shipment of mer-
chandise to California before the days of trans-
continental railroads at a minimum cost evolved
the clipper ship. These vessels entered quite
early into the California trade and soon displaced
the short, clumsy vessels of a few hundred tons
burden that took from six to ten months to
make a voyage around the Horn. The clipper
ship Flying Cloud, which arrived at San Fran-
cisco in August, 1851, made the voyage from
New York in eighty-nine days. These vessels
were built long and narrow and carried heavy
sail. Their capacity ranged from one to two
thousand tons burden. The overland railroads
took away a large amount of their business.

Capt. Jedediah S. Smith, as previously stated,
was the real pathfinder of the western moun-
tains and plains. He marked out the route
from Salt Lake by way of the Rio Virgin, the
Colorado and the Cajon Pass to Los Angeles
in 1826. This route was extensively traveled
by the belated immigrants of the early '50s.
Those reaching Salt Lake City too late in the
season to cross the Sierra Nevadas turned
southward and entered California by Smith's
trail.

The early immigration to California came by
way of Fort Hall. From there it turned south-
erly. At Fort Hall the Oregon and California
immigrants separated. The disasters that be-
fell the Donner party were brought upon them
by their taking the Hastings cut-off, which was
represented to them as saving two hundred and
fifty miles. It was shorter, but the time spent
in making a wagon road through a rough coun-
try delayed them until they were caught by the
snows in the mountains. Lassen's cut-off was
another route that brought disaster and delays
to many of the immigrants who were induced
to take it. The route up the Platte through the

South Pass of the Rocky mountains and down
the Humboldt received by far the larger amount
of travel.

The old Santa Fe trail from Independence to
Santa Fe, and from there by the old Spanish
trail around the north bank of the Colorado
across the Rio Virgin down the Mojave river
and through the Cajon Pass to Los Angeles,
was next in importance. Another route by
which much of the southern emigration came
was what was known as the Gila route. It
started at Fort Smith, Ark., thence via El Paso
and Tucson and down the Gila to Yuma, thence
across the desert through the San Gorgono
Pass to Los Angeles. In 1852 it was estimated
one thousand wagons came by this route. There
was another route still further south than this
which passed through the northern states of
Mexico, but it was not popular on account of
the hostility of the Mexicans and the Apaches.

The first overland stage line was established
in 1857. The route extended from San Antonio
de Bexar, Tex., to San Diego, via El Paso, Mes-
sillo, Tucson and Colorado City (now Yuma).
The service was twice a month. The contract
was let to James E. Burch.'the Postal Depart-
ment reserving "the right to curtail or discon-
tinue the service should any route subsequently
put under contract cover the whole or any por-
tion of the route." The San Diego Herald,
August 12, 1857, thus notes the departure of the
first mail by that route: "The pioneer mail
train from San Diego to San Antonio, Tex.,
under the contract entered into by the govern-
ment with Mr. James Burch, left here on the
gth inst. (August 9, 1857) at an early hour in
the morning, and is now pushing its way for the
east at a rapid rate. The mail was of course
carried on pack animals, as will be the case
until wagons which are being pushed across will
have been put on the line. * * * The first
mail from the other side has not yet arrived,
although somewhat overdue, and conjecture is
rife as to the cause of the delay." The eastern
mail arrived a few days later.

The service continued to improve, and the
fifth trip from the eastern terminus to San
Diego "was made in the extraordinary short

214

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

time of twenty-six days and twelve hours," and
the San Diego Herald on this arrival, October
6, 1857, rushed out an extra "announcing the
very gratifying fact of the complete triumph of
the southern route notwithstanding the croak-
ings of many of the opponents of the adminis-
tration in this state." But the "triumph of the
southern route" was of short duration. In
September, 1858, the stages of the Butterfield
line began making their semi-weekly trips.
This route from its western terminus, San Fran-
cisco, came down the coast to Gilroy, thence
through Pacheco Pass to the San Joaquin val-
ley, up the valley and by way of Fort Tejon to
Los Angeles ; from there eastward by Temecula
and Warner's to Yuma, thence following very
nearly what is now the route of the . Southern
Pacific Railroad through Arizona and NewMex-
ico to El Paso, thence turning northward to
Fort Smith, Ark. There the route divided, one
branch going to St. Louis and the other to
Memphis. The mail route from San Antonio
to San Diego was discontinued.

The Butterfield stage line was one of the long-
est continuous lines ever organized. Its length
was two thousand eight hundred and eighty
miles. It began operation in September, 1858.
The first stage from the east reached Los
Angeles October 7 and San Francisco October
io. A mass-meeting was held at San Francisco
the evening of October 11 "for the purpose of
expressing the sense entertained by the people
of the city of the great benefits she is to re-
ceive from the establishment of the overland
mail." Col. J. B. Crocket acted as president
and Frank M. Pixley as secretary. The speaker
of the evening in his enthusiasm said: "In my
opinion one of the greatest blessings that could
befall California would be to discontinue at once
all communication by steamer between San
Francisco and New York. On yesterday we
received advices from New York, New Orleans
and St. Louis in less than twenty-four days via
El Paso. Next to the discovery of gold this is
the most important fact yet developed in the
history of California." W. L. Ormsby, special
correspondent of the New York Herald, the
firsl and only through passenger by the over-

land mail coming in three hours less than
twenty-four days, was introduced to the audi-
ence and was greeted with terrific applause. He
gave a description of the route and some inci-
dents of the journey.

The government gave the Butterfield com-
pany a subsidy of $600,000 a year for a service
of two mail coaches each way a week. In 1859
the postal revenue from this route was only
$27,000, leaving Uncle Sam more than half a
million dollars out of pocket. At the breaking
out of the Civil war the southern overland mail
route was discontinued and a contract was made
with Butterfield for a six-times-a-week mail by
the central route via Salt Lake City, with a
branch line to Denver. The eastern terminus
was at first St. Joseph, but on account of the
war it was changed to Omaha. The western
terminus was Placerville, Cal., time twenty
days for eight months, and twenty-three days
for the remaining four months. The contract
was for three years at an annual subsidy of
$1,000,000. The last overland stage contract
for carrying the mails was awarded to Wells,
Fargo & Co., October 1, 1868, for $1,750,000
per annum, with deductions for carriage by rail-
way. The railway was rapidly reducing the dis-
tance of stage travel.

The only inland commerce during the Mexi-
can era was a few bands of mules sold to New
Mexican traders and driven overland to Santa
Fe by the old Spanish trail and one band of
cattle sold to the Oregon settlers in 1837 and
driven by the coast route to Oregon City. The
Californians had no desire to open up an inland
trade with their neighbors and the traders and
trappers who came overland were not welcome.

After the discovery of gold, freighting to the
mines became an important business. Supplies
had to be taken by pack trains and wagons.
Freight charges were excessively high at first.
In 1848, "it cost $5 to carry a hundred pounds
of goods from Sutter's Fort to the lower
mines, a distance of twenty miles, and $10 per
hundred weight for freight to the upper mines,
a distance of forty miles. Two horses can draw
one thousand five hundred pounds." In Decem-
ber, 1849, the roads were almost impassable

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and teamsters were charging from $40 to $50 a
hundred pounds for hauling freight from Sacra-
mento to Mormon Island.

In 1855 an inland trade was opened up be-
tween Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. The
first shipment was made by Banning and Alex-
ander. The wagon train consisted of fifteen
ten-mule teams heavily freighted with merchan-
dise. The venture was a success financially.
The train left Los Angeles in May and returned
in September, consuming four months in the
journey. The trade increased and became quite
an important factor in the business of the south-
ern part of the state. In 1859 sixty wagons
were loaded for Salt Lake in the month of
January, and in March of the same year one
hundred and fifty loaded with goods were sent
to the Mormon capital. In 1865 and 1866 there
was a considerable shipment of goods from Los
Angeles to Idaho and Montana by wagon trains.
These trains went by way of Salt Lake. This
trade was carried on during the winter months
when the roads over the Sierras and the Rocky
mountains were blocked with snow.

Freighting by wagon train to Washoe formed
a very important part of the inland commerce
of California between 1859 and 1869. The im-
mense freight wagons called "prairie schooners"
carried almost as much as a freight car. The
old-time teamster, like the old-time stage driver,
was a unique character. Both have disappeared.
Their occupation is gone. We shall never look
on their like again.

The pony express rider came early in the his-
tory of California. Away back in 1775, when
the continental congress made Benjamin Frank-
lin postmaster-general of the United Colonies,
on the Pacific coast soldier couriers, fleet
mounted, were carrying their monthly budgets
of mail between Monterey in Alta California,
and Loreto, near the southern extremity of the
peninsula of Lower California, a distance of one
thousand five hundred miles.

In the winter of 1859-60 a Wall street lobby
was in Washington trying to get an appropria-
tion of $5,000,000 for carrying the mails one
year between New York and San Francisco.
William H. Russell, of the firm of Russell, Ma-

jors & Waddell, then engaged in running a
daily stage line between the Missouri river and
Salt Lake City, hearing of the lobby's efforts,
offered to bet $200,000 that he could put on a
mail line between San Francisco and St. Joseph
that could make the distance, one thousand nine
hundred and fifty miles, in ten days. The wager
was accepted. Russell and his business man-
ager, A. B. Miller, an old plains man, bought
the fleetest horses they could find in the west
and employed one hundred and twenty-five
riders selected with reference to their light
weight and courage. It was essential that the
horses should be loaded as lightly as possible.
The horses were stationed from ten to twenty
miles apart and each rider was required to ride
seventy-five miles. For change of horses and
mail bag two' minutes were allowed, at each
station. One man took care of the two horses
kept there. Everything being arranged a start
was made from St. Joseph, April 3, i860. The
bet was to be decided on the race eastward. At
meridian on April 3, i860, a signal gun on a
steamer at Sacramento proclaimed the hour of
starting. At that signal Mr. Miller's private
saddle horse, Border Ruffian, with his rider
bounded away toward the foothills of the Sierra
Nevadas. The first twenty miles were covered
in forty-nine minutes. All went well till the
Platte river was reached. The river was swollen
by recent rain. Rider and horse plunged boldly
into it, but the horse mired in the quicksands
and was drowned. The rider carrying the mail
bag footed it ten miles to the next relay sta-
tion. When the courier arrived at the sixty-
mile station out from St. Joseph he was one
hour behind time. The last one had just thin-
hours and thirty minutes in which to make the
sixty miles and win the race. A heavy rain
was falling and the roads were slippery, but
with six horses to make the distance he won
with five minutes and a fraction to spare. And
thus was finished the longest race for the larg-
est stake ever run in America.

The pony express required to do its work-
nearly five hundred horses, about one hundred
and ninety stations, two hundred station keepers
and over a hundred riders. Each rider usually
rode the horses on about seventy-five miles.

216

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

but sometimes much greater distances were
made. Robert H. Haslam, Pony Bob, made on
one occasion a continuous ride of three hundred
and eighty miles and William F. Cody, now fa-
mous as Buffalo Bill, in one continuous trip
rode three hundred and eighty-four miles,
stopping only for meals, and to change
horses.

The pony express was a semi-weekly service.
Fifteen pounds was the limit of the weight of
the waterproof mail bag and its contents. The
postage or charge was $5 on a letter of half an
ounce. The limit was two hundred letters, but
sometimes there were not more than twenty in
a bag. The line never paid. The shortest time
ever made by the pony express was seven days
and seventeen hours. This was in March, 1861,
when it carried President Lincoln's message.
At first telegraphic messages were received at
St. Joseph up to five o'clock p. m. of the day
of starting and sent to San Francisco on the
express, arriving at Placerville, which was then
the eastern terminus of the line. The pony ex-
press was suspended October 27, 1861, on the
completion of the telegraph.

The first stage line was established between
Sacramento and Mormon Island in September,
1849, fare $16 to $32, according to times.
Sacramento was the great distributing point for
the mines and was also the center from which
radiated numerous stage lines. In 1853 a dozen
lines were owned there and the total capital in-
vested in staging was estimated at $335,000.
There were lines running to Coloma, Nevada,
Placerville, Georgetown, Yankee Jim's, Jack-
son, Stockton, Shasta and Auburn. In 185 1
Stockton had seven daily stages. The first stage
line between San Francisco and San Jose was
established in April, 1850, fare $32. A number
of lines were consolidated. In i860 the Califor-
nia stage company controlled eight lines north-
ward, the longest extending seven hundred and
ten miles to Portland with sixty stations, thirty-
five drivers and five hundred horses, eleven
drivers and one hundred and fifty horses per-
taining to the rest. There were seven indepen-
dent lines covering four hundred and sixty-four
miles, chiefly cast and south, the longest to Vir-

ginia City.* These lines disappeared with the
advent of the railroad.

The pack train was a characteristic feature of
early mining days. Many of the mountain
camps were inaccessible to wagons and the only
means of shipping in goods was by pack train.
A pack train consisted of from ten to twenty
mules each, laden with from two hundred to
four hundred pounds. The load was fastened on
the animal by means of a pack saddle which
was held in its place by a cinch tightly laced
around the animal's body. The sure-footed
mules could climb steep grades and wind round
narrow trails on the side of steep mountains
without slipping or tumbling over the cliffs.
Mexicans were the most expert packers.

The scheme to utilize camels and dromedaries
as beasts of burden on the arid plains of the
southwest was agitated in the early fifties. The
chief promoter if not the originator of the
project was Jefferson Davis, afterwards presi-
dent of the Southern Confederacy. During the
last days of the congress of 185 1, Mr. Davis
offered an amendment to the army appropria-
tion bill appropriating $30,000 for the purchase
of thirty camels and twenty dromedaries. The
bill was defeated. When Davis was secretary
of war in 1854, congress appropriated $30,000
for the purchase and importation of camels and
in December of that year Major C. Wayne was
sent to Egypt and Arabia to buy seventy-five.
He secured the required number and shipped
them on the naval store ship Supply. They
were landed at Indianola, Tex., February 10,
1857. Three had died on the voyage. About
half of the herd were taken to Albuquerque,
where an expedition was fitted out under the
command of Lieutenant Beale for Fort Tejon,
Cal. ; the other half was employed in packing on
the plains of Texas and in the Gadsen Purchase,
as Southern Arizona was then called.

It very soon became evident that the camel
experiment would not be a success. The Amer-
ican teamster could not be converted into an
Arabian camel driver. From the very first meet-
ing there was a mutual antipathy between the

* Sacramento Union, January 1, 1861.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

217

American mule whacker and the beast of the
prophet. The teamsters when transformed into
camel drivers deserted and the troopers refused
to have anything to do with the misshapen
beasts. So because there was no one to load
and navigate these ships of the desert their
voyages became less and less frequent, until
finally they ceased altogether; and these desert
ships were anchored at the different forts in
the southwest. After the breaking out of the
Civil war the camels at the forts in Texas and
New Mexico were turned loose to shift for
themselves. Those in Arizona and California
were condemned and sold by the government to
two Frenchmen who used them for packing,
first in Nevada and later in Arizona, but tiring
of the animals they turned them out on the
desert. Some of these camels or possibly their
descendants are still roaming over the arid
plains of southern Arizona and Sonora.

The first telegraph was completed September
ii, 1853. It extended from the business quar-
ter of San Francisco to the Golden Gate and
was used for signalling vessels. The first long
line connected Marysville, Sacramento, Stock-
ton and San Jose. This was completed October
24, 1853. Another line about the same time
was built from San Francisco to Placerville by
way of Sacramento. A line was built southward
from San Jose along the Butterfield overland
mail route to Los Angeles in i860. The Over-
land Telegraph, begun in 1858, was completed
November 7, 1861.

The first express for the States was sent un-
der the auspices of the California Star (news-
paper). The Star of March 1, 1848, contained
the announcement that "We are about to send
letters by express to the States at fifty cents
each, papers twelve and a half cents ; to start
April 15; any mail arriving after that time will
be returned to the writers. The Star refused
to send copies of its rival, The Calif omian, in its
express.

The first local express was started by Charles
L. Cady in August, 1847. It left San Francisco
every Monday and Fort Sacramento, its other
terminus, every Thursday. Letters twenty-five
cents. Its route was by way of Saucelito, Napa
and Petaluma to Sacramento.

Weld & Co.'s express was established in Oc-
tober, 1849. This express ran from San Fran-
cisco to Marysville, having its principal offices
in San Francisco, Benicia and Sacramento. It
was the first express of any consequence estab-
lished in California. Its name was changed to
Hawley & Co.'s express. The first trip was
made in the Mint, a sailing vessel, and took
six days. Afterward it was transferred to the
steamers Hartford and McKim. The company
paid these boats $800 per month for the use of
one state room; later for the same accommoda-
tion it paid $1,500 per month. The Alia Cali-
fornia of January 7, 1850, says : "There are so
many new express companies daily starting that
we can scarcely keep the run of them."

The following named were the principal com-
panies at that time: Hawley & Co., Angel.
Young & Co., Todd, Bryan, Stockton Express,
Henly, McKnight & Co., Brown, Knowlton &
Co. The business of these express companies
consisted largely in carrying letters to the
mines. The letters came through the postoffice
in San Francisco, but the parties to whom they
were addressed were in the mines. While the
miner would gladly give an ounce to hear from
home he could not make the trip to the Bay at
a loss of several hundred dollars in time and
money. The express companies obviated this
difficulty. The Alta of July 27, 1850, says: "We
scarcely know what we should do if it were not
for the various express lines established which
enable us to hold communication with the mines.
With the present defective mail communication
we should scarcely ever be able to hear from
the towns throughout California or from the
remote portions of the Placers north or south.
Hawley & Co., Todd & Bryan and Besford &
Co. are three lines holding communication with
different sections of the country. Adams & Co.
occupy the whole of a large building on Mont-
gomery street."

Adams & Co., established in 1850, soon be-
came the leading express company of the coast.
It absorbed a number of minor companies. It
established relays of the fastest horses to carry
the express to the mining towns. As early as
1852 the company's lines had penetrated the re-
mote mining camps. Some of its riders per-

218

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

formed feats in riding that exceeded the famous
pony express riders. Isaac W. Elwell made the
trip between Placerville and Sacramento in two
hours and fifty minutes, distance sixty-four
miles; Frank Ryan made seventy-five miles in
four hours and twenty minutes. On his favorite
horse, Colonel, he made twenty miles in fifty-
five minutes. Adams & Co. carried on a bank-
ing business and had branch banks in all the
leading mining towns. They also became a po-

litical power. In the great financial crash of
1855 they failed and in their failure ruined thou-
sands of their depositors. Wells, Fargo & Co.
express was organized in 185 1. It weathered
the financial storm that carried down Adams &
Co. It gained the confidence of the people of
the Pacific coast and has never betrayed it. Its
business has grown to immense proportions. It
is one of the leading express companies of the
world.

CHAPTER XXXII.

RAILROADS.

THE agitation of the Pacific railroad ques-
tion began only two years after the first
passenger railway was put in operation
in the United States. The originator of the
scheme to secure the commerce of Asia by a
transcontinental railway from the Atlantic to
the Pacific was Hartwell Carver, grandson of
the famous explorer, Jonathan Carver. He
published articles in the New York Courier and
Inquirer in 1832 elaborating his idea, and
memorialized congress on the subject. The
western terminus was to be on the Columbia
river. His road was to be made of stone. There
were to be sleeping cars and dining cars at-
tached to each train. In 1836, John Plumbe,
then a resident of Dubuque, Iowa, advocated
the building of a railroad from Lake Michigan
to Oregon. At a public meeting held in Du-
buque, March 26, 1838, which Plumbe ad-
dressed, a memorial to congress was drafted
"praying for an appropriation to defray the ex-
pense of the survey and location of the first link
in the great Atlantic and Pacific railroad, name-
ly, from the lakes to the Mississippi." Their
application was favorably received and an ap-
propriation being made the same year, which
was expended under the direction of the secre-
tary of war, the report being of a very favorable
character.*

I'lumbe received the indorsement of the Wis-

*Bancroft's History of California, Vol. VII., p. 499.

consin legislature of 1839-40 and a memorial
was drafted to congress urging the continuance
of the work. Plumbe went to Washington to
urge his project. But the times were out of
joint for great undertakings. The financial
panic of 1837 had left the government revenues
in a demoralized condition. Plumbe's plan was
to issue stock to the amount of $100,000,000
divided in shares of $5 each. The government
was to appropriate alternate sections of the
public lands along the line of the road. Five
million dollars were to be called in for the first
installment. After this was expended in building,
the receipts from the sale of the lands was to
continue the building of the road. One hundred
miles were to be built each year and twenty
years was the time set for the completion of the
road. A bill granting the subsidy and authoriz-
ing the building of the road was introduced in
congress, but was defeated by the southern
members who feared that it would foster the
growth of free states.

The man best known in connection with the
early agitation of the Pacific railroad scheme
was Asa Whitney, of New York. For a time he
acted with Carver in promulgating the project,
but took up a plan of his own. Whitney wanted
a strip of land sixty miles wide along the whole
length of the road, which would have given
about one hundred million acres of the public
domain. Whitney's scheme called forth a great
deal of discussion. It was feared by some

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

timorous souls that such a monopoly would
endanger the government and by others that
it would bankrupt the public treasury. The agi-
tation was kept up for several years. The
acquisition of California and New Mexico threw
the project into politics. The question of de-
pleting the treasury or giving away the public
domain no longer worried the pro-slavery poli-
ticians in congress. The question that agitated
them now was how far south could the road
be deflected so that it would enhance the value
of the lands over which they hoped to spread
their pet institution — human slavery.

Another question that agitated the members
of congress was whether the road should be
built by the government — should be a national
road. The route which the road should take
was fought over year after year in congress.
The south would not permit the north to have
the road for fear that freemen would absorb the
public lands and build up free states. It was
the old dog-in-the-manger policy so character-
istic of the southern proslavery politicians.

The California newspapers early took up the
discussion and routes were thick as leaves in
ATalambrosa. In the Star of May 13, 1848, Dr.
John Marsh outlines a route which was among
the best proposed: "From the highest point on
the Bay of San Francisco to which seagoing
vessels can ascend; thence up the valley of the
San Joaquin two hundred and fifty miles;
thence through a low pass (Walker's) to the
valley of the Colorado and thence through Ari-
zona and New Mexico by the Santa Fe trail to
Independence, Mo."

Routes were surveyed and the reports of the
engineers laid before congress; memorials were
received from the people of California praying
for a road; bills were introduced and discussed,
but the years passed and the Pacific railroad
was not begun. Slavery, that "sum of all vil-
lainies," was an obstruction more impassable
than the mountains and deserts that intervened
between the Missouri and the Pacific. Southern
politicians, aided and abetted by Gwin of Cali-
fornia neutralized every attempt.

One of the first of several local railroad
projects that resulted in something more than
resolutions, public meetings and the election of

a board of directors that never directed any-
thing was the building of a railroad from San
Francisco to San Jose. The agitation was be-
gun early in 1850 and by February, 185 1, $100,-
000 had been subscribed. September 6 of that
year a company was organized and the pro-
jected road given the high sounding title of the
Pacific & Atlantic railroad. Attempts were
made to secure subscriptions for its stock in
New York and in Europe, but without success.
Congress was appealed to, but gave no assist-
ance and all that there was to the road for ten
years was its name. In 1859 a new organization
was effected under the name of the San Fran-
cisco & San Jose railroad company. An at-
tempt was made to secure a subsidy of S , -
000 from the three counties through which the
road was to pass, but this failed and the corpora-
tion dissolved. Another organization, the
fourth, was effected with a capital stock <>f
$2,000,000. The construction of the road was
begun in October, i860, and completed to San
Jose January 16, 1864.

The first railroad completed and put into suc-
cessful operation in California was the Sacra-
mento Valley road. It was originally intended
to extend the road from Sacramento through
Placer and Sutter counties to Mountain City,
in Yuba county, a distance of about forty miles.
It came to a final stop at a little over half that
distance. Like the San Jose road the question
of building was agitated several years before
anything was really done. In 1853 the company
was reorganized under the railroad act of that
year. Under the previous organization sub-
scriptions had been obtained. The Sacramento
Union of September 19, 1852, says: "The books
of the Sacramento Valley railroad company
were to have been opened in San Francisco
Wednesday. Upwards of $200,000 of the neces-
sary stock has been subscribed from here."
The Union of September 24 announces, "That
over $600,000 had already been subscribed at
San Francisco and Sacramento." Under the re-
organization a new board was elected November
12, 1853. C. L. Wilson was made president:
F. W. Page, treasurer, and W. H. Watson, sec-
retary. Theodore D. Judah. afterwards famous
in California railroad building, was employed as

220

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

engineer and the construction of the road began
in February, 1855. It was completed to Fol-
som a, distance of twenty-two miles from Sacra-
mento and the formal opening of the road for
business took place February 22, 1856. Accord-
ing to the secretary's report for 1857 the earn-
ings of that year averaged $18,000 per month.
The total earnings for the year amounted to
$216,000; the expenses $84,000, leaving a profit
of $132,000. The cost of the road and its equip-
ment was estimated at $700,000. From this
showing it would seem that California's first
railroad ought to have been a paying invest-
ment, but it was not. Money then was worth.
5 per cent a month and the dividends from the
road about 18 per cent a year. The difference
between one and a half per cent and 5 per cent
a month brought the road to a standstill.

Ten years had passed since California had
become a state and had its representatives in
congress. In all these years the question of a
railroad had come up in some form in that body,
yet the railroad seemingly was as far from a
consummation as it had been a decade before.
In 1859 the silver mines of the Washoe were
discovered and in the winter of 1859-60 the
great silver rush began. An almost continuous
stream of wagons, pack trains, horsemen and
footmen poured over the Sierra Nevadas into
Carson Valley and up the slopes of Mount
Davidson to Virginia City. The main line of
travel was by way of Placerville, through John-
son's Pass to Carson City. An expensive toll
road was built over the mountains and monster
freight wagons hauled great loads of merchan-
dise and mill machinery to the mines. "In 1863
the tolls on the new road amounted to $300,000
and the freight bills on mills and merchandise
summed up $13,000,000."*

The rush to Washoe gave a new impetus to
railroad projecting. A convention of the whole
coast had been held at San Francisco in Sep-
tember, 1859, but nothing came of it beyond
propositions and resolutions. Early in 1861,
Theodore P. Judah called a railroad meeting at
the St. Charles hotel in Sacramento. The feasi-
bility of a road over the mountains, the large

amount of business that would come to that
road from the Washoe mines and the necessity
of Sacramento moving at once to secure that
trade were pointed out. This road would be the
beginning of a transcontinental line and Sacra-
mento had the opportunity of becoming its
terminus. Judah urged upon some of the lead-
ing business men the project of organizing a
company to begin the building of a transconti-
nental road. The Washoe trade and travel
would be a very important item in the business
of the road.

On the 28th of June, 1861, the Central Pacific
Railroad company was organized under the
general incorporation law of the state. Leland
Stanford was chosen president, C. P. Hunting-
ton, vice-president, Mark Hopkins, treasurer,
James Bailey, secretary, and T. D. Judah, chief
engineer. The directors were those just named
and E. B. Crocker, John F.Morse, D. W. Strong
and Charles Marsh. The capital stock of the
company was $8,500,000 divided into eighty-five
thousand shares of $100 each. The shares taken
by individuals were few, Stanford, Huntington,
Hopkins, Judah and Charles Crocker subscrib-
ing for one hundred and fifty each; Glidden &
Williams, one hundred and twenty-five shares;
Charles A. Lombard and Orville D. Lombard,
three hundred and twenty shares; Samuel
Hooper, Benjamin J. Reed, Samuel P. Shaw,
fifty shares each; R. O. Ives, twenty-five shares;
Edwin B. Crocker, ten shares; Samuel Bran-
nan, two hundred shares; cash subscriptions of
which 10 per cent was required by law to be
paid down realizing but a few thousand dollars
with which to begin so important a work as a
railroad across the Sierra Nevada.*

The total amount subscribed was $158,000,
scarcely enough to build five miles of road on
the level plains if it had all been paid up. None
of the men in the enterprise was rich. Indeed,
as fortunes go now, none of them had more than
a competence. Charles Crocker, who was one
of the best off, in his sworn statement, placed
the value of his property at $25,000; C. P.
Huntington placed the value of his individual
possessions at $7,222, while Leland Stanford and

*Bancroft,9 History of California, Vol. VII., p. 541.

* Bancroft's History of California, Vol. VII.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

22]

his brother together owned property worth
$32,950. The incubus that so long had pre-
vented building a Pacific railroad was removed.
The war of secession had begun. The southern
senators and representatives were no longer in
congress to obstruct legislation. The thirty-
second and the thirty-fifth parallel roads south-
ern schemes, were out of the way or rather the
termini of these roads were inside the confeder-
ate lines.

A bill "to aid in the construction of a radroad
and telegraph line from the Missouri river to
the Pacific ocean and to secure to the govern-
ment the use of the same for postal, military and
other purposes passed both houses and became
a law July 1, 1862. The bill provided for the
building of the road by two companies. The
Union Pacific (which was to be a union of
several roads already projected) was given the
construction of the road to the eastern boundary
of California, where it would connect with the
Central Pacific. Government bonds were to be
given to the companies to the amount of $16,000
per mile to the foot of the mountains and
$48,000 per mile through the mountains when
forty miles of road had been built and approved
by the government commissioners. In, addition
to the bonds the companies were to receive
"every alternate section of public land desig-
nated by odd numbers to the amount of five
alternate sections per mile on each side of the
railroad on the line thereof and within the limits
of ten miles on each side of the road not sold,
reserved or otherwise disposed of by the United
States." Mineral lands were exempted and any
lands unsold three years after the completion of
the entire road were subject to a preemption
like other public lands at a price not exceeding
$1.25 per acre, payable to the company.

The government bonds were a first mortgage
on the road. The ceremony of breaking ground
for the beginning of the enterprise took place at
Sacramento, February 22, 1863, Governor
Stanford throwing the first shovelful of earth,
and work was begun on the first eighteen miles
of the road which was let by contract to be
finished by August, 1863. The Central Pacific
company was in hard lines. Its means were not
sufficient to build forty miles which must be

completed before the subsidy could be received.
In October, 1863, Judah who had been instru-
mental in securing the first favorable legislation
set out a second time for Washington to ask
further assistance from congress. At New York
he was stricken with a fever and died there. To
him more than any other man is due the credit
of securing for the Pacific coast its first trans-
continental railroad. In July, 1864, an amended
act was passed increasing the land grant from
six thousand four hundred acres to twelve
thousand eight hundred per mile and reducing
the number of miles to be built annually from
fifty to twenty-five. The company was allowed
to bond its road to the same amount per mile
as the government subsidy.

The Western Pacific, which was virtually a
continuation of the Central Pacific, was organ-
ized in December, 1862, for the purpose of
building a railroad from Sacramento via Stock-
ton to San Jose. A branch of this line was
constructed from Niles to Oakland, which was
made the terminus of the Central Pacific. The
Union Pacific did not begin construction until
1865, while the Central Pacific had forty-four
miles constructed. In 1867 the Central Pacific
had reached the state line. It had met with
many obstacles in the shape of lawsuits and
unfavorable comments by the press. From the
state line it pushed out through Nevada and
on the 28th of April, 1869, the two companies
met with their completed roads at Promontory
Point in Utah, fifty-three miles west of Ogden.
The ceremony of joining the two roads took
place May 10. The last tie, a handsomely fin-
ished piece of California laurel, was laid and
Governor Stanford with a silver hammer drove
a golden spike. The two locomotives, one
from the east and one from the west, bumped
noses and the first transcontinental railroad
was completed.

The Southern Pacific Railroad company of
California was incorporated in December. 1865.
It was incorporated to build a railroad from
some point on the bay of San Francisco through
the counties of Santa Clara, Monterey. San
Luis Obispo, Tulare, Los Angeles to San
Diego and thence easterly through San Diccro
to the eastern boundary of the state there to

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

connect with a railroad from the Mississippi
river.

"In July, 1866, congress granted to the At-
lantic and Pacific Railroad company to aid in
the construction of its road and telegraph line
from Springfield, Mo., by the most eligible route
to Albuquerque in New Mexico and thence by
the thirty-fifth parallel route to the Pacific, an
amount of land equal to that granted to the
Central Pacific. By this act the Southern Pa-
cific Railroad was authorized to connect with
the Atlantic and Pacific near the boundary line
of California, at such point as should be deemed
most suitable by the companies and should have
therefore the same amount of land per mile as
the Atlantic and Pacific."*

In 1867 the Southern Pacific company de-
cided to change its route and instead of build-
ing down through the coast counties to go east-
ward from Gilroy through Pacheco's pass into
the upper San Joaquin valley through Fresno,
Kern and San Bernardino to the Colorado river
near Fort Mojave. This contemplated change
left the lower coast counties out in the cold and
caused considerable dissatisfaction, and an at-
tempt was made to prevent it from getting a
land subsidy. Congress, however, authorized
the change, as did the California legislature of
1870, and the road secured the land.

The San Francisco and San Jose Railroad
came into possession of the Southern Pacific
company, San Francisco donating three thou-
sand shares of stock in that road on condition
that the Southern Pacific company, after it se-
cured the San Jose road, should extend it to
the southeastern boundary of the state. In 1869
a proposition was made to the supervisors of
San Francisco to donate $1,000,000 in bonds of
the city to the Southern Pacific company, on
condition that it build two hundred miles south
from Gilroy, the bonds to be delivered on the
completion and stocking of each section of fifty
miles of road. The bonds were voted by the
people of the city. The road was built to
Solcdad, seventy miles from Gilroy, and then
stopped. The different branch roads in the San
Jose and Salinas valley were all consolidated

* Bancroft, VII., p. 594.

under the name of the Southern Pacific. The
Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific, al-
though apparently different organizations, were
really one company.

The Southern Pacific built southward from
Lathrop, a station on the Central Pacific's line,
a railroad up the valley by way of Tehachapi
Pass to Los Angeles. While this road was in
course of construction in 1872 a proposition was
made to the people of Los Angeles through the
county board of supervisors to vote a subsidy
equal to 5 per cent of the entire amount of the
taxable property of the county on condition that
the Southern Pacific build fifty miles of its main
line to Yuma in the county. Part of the subsidy
was to be paid in bonds of the Los Angeles &
San Pedro Railroad, amounting to $377,000 and
sixty acres of land for depot purposes. The
total amount of subsidy to be given was $610,-
000. The proposition was accepted by the
people, the railroad company in addition to its
original offer agreeing to build a branch road
twenty-seven miles long to Anaheim. This was
done to head off the Tom Scott road which
had made a proposition to build a branch road
from San Diego to Los Angeles to connect with
the Texas Pacific road which the year before
had been granted a right of way from Marshall,
Tex., to San Diego, and was preparing to build
its road. The Southern Pacific completed its
road to Los Angeles in September, 1876, and
reached the Colorado river on its way east in
April, 1877. It obtained the old franchise of the
Texas Pacific and continued its road eastward
to El Paso, Tex., where it made connections
with roads to New Orleans and other points
south and east, thus giving California its second
transcontinental railroad. This road was com-
pleted to El Paso in 1881.

The Atlantic & Pacific road with which the
Southern Pacific was to connect originally,
suffered from the financial crash of 1873 and
suspended operations for a time. Later it en-
tered into a combination with the Atchison, To-
peka & Santa Fe and St. Louis & San Francisco
railroad companies. This gave the Atchison
road a half interest in the charter of the Atlantic
& Pacific. The two companies built a main line
jointly from Albuquerque (where the Atchison

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

223

road ended) west to the Colorado river at the
Needles. Their intention was to continue the
road to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The California Southern and the California
Southern Extension companies were organized
to extend the Atlantic & Pacific from Barstow
to San Diego. These companies consolidated
and completed a road from San Diego to San
Bernardino September 13, 1883. The Southern
Pacific interfered. It attempted to prevent the
California Southern from crossing its tracks at
Colton by placing a heavy engine at the point
of crossing, but was compelled to move the en-
gine to save it from demolition. It built a branch
from Mojave station to connect with the At-
lantic & Pacific in which it had an interest.
This gave connection for the Atlantic & Pacific
over the Southern Pacific lines with both Los
Angeles and San Francisco. This was a serious
blow to the California Southern, but disasters
never come singly. The great flood of January,
1884, swept down through the Temecula Canon
and carried about thirty miles of its track out
to sea. It was doubtful under the circumstances
whether it would pay to rebuild it. Finally the
Southern Pacific agreed to sell its extension
from Barstow to the Needles to the California
Southern, reserving its road from Barstow to

Mojave. Construction was begun at once on
the California Southern line from Barstow to
San Bernardino and in November, 1885, the
road was completed from Barstow to San
Diego. In October, 1886, the road passed un-
der control of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa
Fe. In the spring of 1887 the road was ex-
tended westerly from San Bernardino to meet
the San Gabriel valley road which had been
built eastward from Los Angeles through Pasa-
dena. The completed line reached Los Angeles
in May, 1887, thus giving California a third
transcontinental line.

After many delays the gap in the Southern
Pacific coast line was closed and the first trains
from the north and the south passed over its
entire length between Los Angeles and San
Francisco on the 31st of March, 1901, nearly
thirty years after the first section of the road
was built.

The Oregon & California and the Central
Pacific were consolidated in 1870. The two
ends of the road were united at Ashland, Ore.,
in 1887. The entire line is now controlled by
the Southern Pacific, and, in connection with
the Northern Pacific and the Oregon Railway
& Navigation Road at Portland, forms a fourth
transcontinental line for California.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE INDIAN QUESTION.

IT IS quite the fashion now with a certain
school of writers, who take their history of
California from "Ramoria" and their infor-
mation on the "Indian question" under the rule
of the mission padres from sources equally fic-
titious, to draw invidious comparisons between
the treatment of the Indian by Spain and Mex-
ico when mission rule was dominant in Cali-
fornia and his treatment by the United States
after the conquest.

That the Indian was brutally treated and un-
mercifully slaughtered by the American miners
and rancheros in the early '50s none will deny;
that he had fared but little better under the rule

of Spain and Mexico is equally true. The tame
and submissive Indians of the sea coast with
whom the mission had to deal were a very
different people from the mountain tribes with
whom the Americans came in conflict.

We know but little of the conquistas or gentile
hunts that were occasionally sent out from the
mission to capture subjects for conversion. Tiic
history of these was not recorded. From "The
narrative of a voyage to the Pacific and Berings
strait with the Polar expedition; performed in
his majesty's ship Blossom, under command '»:
Capt. F. W. Beechey. R. N.. in the years
1825-26-27-28, we have the story of one of these

224

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

conquistas or convert raids. Captain Beechey
visited California in 1828. While in California
he studied the missions, or at least those he vis-
ual, and after his return to England published
his observations. His observations have great
value. He was a disinterested observer and
gave a plain, straightforward, truthful account
of what he saw, without prejudice or partiality.
His narrative dispels much of the romance that
some modern writers throw around mission life.
This conquista set out from the Mission San
Jose.

"At a particular period of the year also, when
the Indians can be spared from agricultural con-
cerns of the establishment, many are permitted
to take the launch of the mission and make ex-
cursions to the Indian territory. All are anx-
ious to go on such occasions. Some to visit
friends, some to procure the manufactures of
their barbarian countrymen (which, by the by,
are often better than their own) and some with a
secret determination never to return. On these
occasions the padres desire them to induce as
many of their unconverted brethren as possible
to accompany them back to the mission; of
course, implying that this is to be done only by
persuasion; but the boat being furnished with a
cannon and musketry and in every respect
equipped for war, it too often happens that the
neophytes and the gente de razon, who super-
intend the direction of the boat, avail them-
selves of their superiority with the desire of in-
gratiating themselves with their master and re-
ceiving a reward. There are besides repeated
acts of aggression, which it is necessary to pun-
ish, all of which furnish proselytes. Women and
children are generally the first objects of cap-
ture, as their husbands and parents sometimes
voluntarily follow them into captivity. These
misunderstandings and captivities keep up a per-
petual enmity amongst the tribes whose thirst
for revenge is insatiable."

We had an opportunity of witnessing the
tragical issue of one of these holyday excursions
of the neophytes of the Mission San Jose. The
launch was armed, as usual, and placed under
the superintendence of an alcalde of the mission,
who appears from one statement (for there are
several), converted the party of pleasure either

into an attack for procuring proselytes or of
revenge upon a particular tribe for some ag-
gression in which they were concerned. They
proceeded up the Rio San Joachin until they
came to the territory of a particular tribe named
Consemenes, when they disembarked with the
gun and encamped for the night near the vil-
lage of Los Gentiles, intending to make an at-
tack upon them next morning, but before they
were prepared the gentiles, who had been ap-
prised of their intention and had collected a
large body of their friends, became the assail-
ants and pressed so hard upon the party that,
notwithstanding they dealt death in every direc-
tion with their cannon and musketry and were
inspired with confidence by the contempt in
which they held the valor and tactics of their un-
converted countrymen, they were overpowered
by numbers and obliged to seek their safety in
flight and to leave the gun in the woods. Some
regained the launch and were saved and others
found their way overland to the mission, but
thirty-four of the party never returned to tell
their tale.

"There were other accounts of the unfortu-
nate affair, one of which accused the padre of
authorizing the attack. The padre was greatly
displeased at the result of the excursion, as the
loss of so many Indians to the mission was of
great consequence and the confidence with
which the victory would inspire the Indians was
equally alarming.

"He therefore joined with the converted In-
dians in a determination to chastise and strike
terror into the victorious tribe and in concert
with the governor planned an expedition against
them. The mission furnished money, arms, In-
dians and horses and the presidio troops, headed
by Alferez Sanches, a veteran, who had been
frequently engaged with the Indians and was
acquainted with that part of the country. The
expedition set out November 19, and we heard
nothing of it until the 27th, but two days after
the troops had taken to the field some immense
columns of smoke rising above the mountains
in the direction of the Cosemmes bespoke the
conflagration of the village of the persecuted
gentiles; and on the day above mentioned the
veteran Sanches made a triumphant entry into

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the Mission of San Jose, escorting forty miser-
able women and children. The gun which had
been lost in the first battle was retaken and
other trophies captured.

"This victory, so glorious according to the
ideas of the conquerors, was achieved with the
loss of only one man on the part of the Chris-
tians, who was mortally wounded by the burst-
ing of his own gun; but on the part of the enemy
it was considerable, as Sanches the morning
after the battle counted forty-one men, women
and children dead. It is remarkable that none
of the prisoners was wounded and it is greatly
to be feared that the Christians, who could
scarcely be prevented from revenging the death
of their relatives upon those who were brought
to the mission, glutted their brutal passions on
all who fell into their hands.

"The prisoners they had captured were imme-
diately enrolled in the list of the mission, except
a nice little boy whose mother was shot while
running away with him in her arms, and he was
sent to the presidio and, as I heard, given to
the Alferez as a reward for his services. The
poor little orphan had received a slight wound in
his forehead ; he wept bitterly at first and refused
to eat, but in time became reconciled to his
fate.

"Those who were taken to the mission were
immediately converted and were daily taught by
the neophytes to repeat the Lord's prayer and
certain hymns in the Spanish language. I hap-
pened to visit the mission about this time and
saw these unfortunate beings under tuition.
They were clothed in blankets and arranged in
a row before a blind Indian, who understood
their dialect and was assisted by an alcalde to
keep order. Their tutor began by desiring them
to kneel, informing them that he was going to
teach them the names of the persons composing
the trinity and they were to repeat in Spanish
what he dictated. The neophytes being ar-
ranged, the speaker began: 'Santisima Trini-
dad, Dios, Jesu Christo, Espiritu Santo,' paus-
ing between each name to listen if the simple
Indians, who had never before spoken a word
of Spanish, pronounced it correctly or anything
near the mark. After they had repeated these
names satisfactorily, their blind tutor, after a

pause, added 'Santos' and recapitulated the
names of a great many saints, which finished the
morning's lesson.

"They did not appear to me to pay much at-
tention to what was going forward and I ob-
served to the padre that I thought their teachers
had an arduous task, but he said they had never
found any difficulty; that the Indians were ac-
customed to change their own gods and that
their conversion was in a measure habitual to
them.

"The expenses of the late expedition fell heav-
ily upon the mission and I was glad to find the
padre thought it was paying very dear for so
few converts, as in all probability it will lessen
his desire ro undertake another expedition and
the poor Indians will be spared the horrors of
being butchered by their own countrymen or
dragged from their homes into captivity."

This conquista and the results that followed
were very similar to some of the so-called In-
dian wars that took place after the American
occupation. The Indians were provoked to hos-
tilities by outrage and injustice. Then the
military came down on them and wiped them
out of existence.

The unsanitary condition of the Indian vil-
lages at some of the missions was as fatal as an
Indian war. The Indian was naturally filthy, but
in his native state he had the whole country to
roam over. If his village became too filthy and
the vermin in it too aggressive, he purified it
by fire — burned up his wigwam. The adobe
houses that took the place of the brush hovel,
which made up the early mission villages, could
not be burned to purify them. No doubt the
heavy death rate at the missions was due largely
to the uncleanly habits of the neophytes. The
statistics given in the chapter on the Franciscan
missions show that in all the missionary estab-
lishments a steady decline, a gradual extinction
of the neophyte population, had been in prog-
ress for two to three decades before the mis-
sions were secularized. Had secularization been
delayed or had it not taken place in the course
of a few decades, at the rate the neophytes were
dying off the missions would have become de-
populated. The death rate was greater than the
birth rate in all of them and the mortality among

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the children was greater even than among the
adults. After secularization the neophytes
drifted to the cities and towns where they could
more readily gratify their passion for strong
drink. Their mission training and their Chris-
tianity had no restraining influence upon them.
Their vicious habits, which were about the only
thing they had acquired by their contact with
the whites, soon put an end to them.

During the Spanish and Mexican eras North-
ern California remained practically a terra in-
cognita. Two missions, San Rafael and San
Francisco Solano, and the castillo at Sonora,
had been established as a sort of protection to
the northern frontier. A few armed incursions
had been made into the country beyond these
to punish Indian horse and cattle thieves. Gen-
eral Vallejo, who was in command of the
troops on the frontera del norte, had always
endeavored to cultivate friendly relations with
the gentiles, but the padres disliked to have
these near the missions on account of their in-
fluence on the neophytes. Near the Mission
San Rafael, in 1833, occurred one of those In-
dian massacres not uncommon under Spanish
and Mexican rule. A body of gentiles from the
rancherias of Pulia, encouraged by Figueroa
and Vallejo, came to the Mission San Rafael
with a view to establishing friendly relations.
The padre put off the interview until next day.
During the night a theft was committed, which
was charged to the gentiles. Fifteen of them
were seized and sent as prisoners to San Fran-
cisco. Padre Mercado, fearing that their coun-
trymen might retaliate, sent out his major doma
Molina with thirty-seven armed neophytes, who
surprised the gentiles in their rancheria,, killed
twenty-one, wounded many more and captured
twenty men, women and children. Vallejo was
indignant at the shameful violation of his prom-
ises of protection to the Indians. He released
the prisoners at San Francisco and the captives
at the mission and tried to pacify the wrathful
gentiles. Padre Mercado was suspended from
his ministry for a short time, but was afterward
freed and returned to San Rafael.*

There was a system of Indian slavery in ex-

* Bancroft's History of California, Vol. III.

istence in California under the rule of Spain and
Mexico. Most of the wealthier Spanish and
Mexican families had Indian servants. In the
raids upon the gentiles the children taken by the
soldiers were sometimes sold or disposed of to
families for servants. Expeditions were gotten
up upon false pretexts, while the main purpose
was to steal Indian children and sell them to
families for servants. This practice was carried
on by the Americans, too, after the conquest.

For a time after the discovery of gold the In-
dians and the miners got along amicably. The
first miners were mainly old Californians, used
to the Indians, but with the rush of '49 came
many rough characters who, by their injustice,
soon stirred up trouble. Sutter had employed a
large number of Indians on his ranches and in
various capacities. These were faithful and hon-
est. Some of them were employed at his mill
in Coloma and in the diggings. In the spring
of 49 a band of desperadoes known as the
Mountain Hounds murdered eight of these at
the mill. Marshall, in trying to defend them,
came near being lynched by the drunken brutes.

The injustice done the Indians soon brought
on a number of so-called Indian wars. These
were costly affairs to the state and in less than
two years had plunged the young common-
wealth into a debt of nearly $1,000,000. In a
copy of the Los Angeles Star for February 28,
1852, I find this enumeration of the wars and
the estimated cost of each: The Morehead ex-
pedition, $120,000; General Bean's first expedi-
tion, $66,000; General Bean's second expedition,
$50,000; the Mariposa war, $230,000; the El
Dorado war, $300,000. The Morehead war orig-
inated out of an injustice done the Yuma In-
dians. These Indians, in the summer of 1849,
had obtained an old scow and established a ferry
across the Colorado river below the mouth of the
Gila, and were making quite a paying business
out of it by ferrying emigrants across the river.
A Dr. A. L. Lincoln, from Illinois, had estab-
lished a ferry at the mouth of the Gila early in
1850. Being short handed he employed eight
men of a party of immigrants, and their leader,
Jack Glanton, who seems to have been a despera-
do. Glanton insulted a Yuma chief and the In-
dians charged him with destroying their boat

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

227

and killing an Irishman they had employed.

Watching their chance the Yumas killed eleven
of the ferrymen, including Lincoln and
Glanton. Governor Burnett ordered Major-Gen-
eral Bean to march against the Yumas. Bean
sent his quartermaster-general, Joseph C. More-
head. Morehead, on Bean's orders, provid-
ed necessaries for a three months' campaign
at most extravagant prices, paying for them in
drafts on the state treasury. Morehead started
out from Los Angeles with forty men, but by
the time he reached the Colorado river he had
recruited his force to one hundred and twenty-
five men. The liquid supplies taken along doubt-
less stimulated recruiting. They reached the
Colorado in the summer of 1850, and camped at
the ferry. The Indians at their approach fled
up the river. After two months' services they
were disbanded. William Carr, one of the three
ferrymen who escaped, was wounded and came to
Los Angeles for treatment. The doctor who
treated him charged the state $500. The man
who boarded him put in a bill of $120; and the
patriot who housed him wanted $45 for house
rent. Bean's first and second expeditions were
very similar in results to the Morehead cam-
paign. The El Dorado expedition or Rogers'
war, as it was sometimes called, was another of
Governor Burnett's fiascos. He ordered Will-
iam Rogers, sheriff of El Dorado county, to call
out two hundred men at the state's expense to
punish the Indians for killing some whites who
had, in all probability, been the aggressors and
the Indians had retaliated. It was well known
that there were men in that part of the country
who had wantonly killed Indians for the pleas-
ure of boasting of their exploits.

Nor were the whites always the aggressors.
There were bad Indians, savages, who killed
without provocation and stole whenever an op-
portunity offered. In their attempts at retalia-
tion the Indians slaughtered indiscriminately
and the innocent more often were their victims
than the guilty. On the side of the whites it
was a war of extermination waged in many in-
stances without regard to age or sex; on the
part of the Indian it was a war of retaliation
waged with as little distinction.

The extermination of the aborigines was fear-

fully rapid. Of over ten thousand Indians in
Yuba, Placer, Nevada and Sierra counties in
1849 not more than thirty-eight hundred re-
mained in 1854. Much of this decrease had been
brought about by dissipation and disease engen-
dered by contact with the whites. Reservations
were established in various parts of the state,
where Indians abounded, but the large salaries
paid to agents and the numerous opportunities
for peculation made these positions attractive
to politicians, who were both incompetent and
dishonest. The Indians, badly treated at the
reservations, deserted them whenever an oppor-
tunity offered.

A recital of the atrocities committed upon
each other in the northwestern part of the state
during a period of nearly twenty years would fill
a volume. The Indian with all his fiendishncss
was often outmatched in cruelty by his pale
faced brother. The Indian Island massacre was
scarcely ever equaled in the annals of Indian
cruelties. Indian Island lies nearly opposite
the city of Eureka in Humboldt Bay. On this
island, fifty years ago, was a large rancheria
of inoffensive Indians, who lived chiefly by fish-
ing. They had not been implicated in any of
the wars or raids that had disturbed that part
of the country. They maintained many of their
old customs and had an annual gathering, at
which they performed various rites and cere-
monies, accompanied by dancing. A number of
the Indians from the mainland joined them at
these times. Near midnight of February 25,
i860, a number of boats filled with white nun
sped silently out to the island. The whites
landed and quietly surrounded the Indians, who
were resting after their orgies, and began the
slaughter with axes, knives and clubs, splitting
skulls, knocking out brains and cutting the
throats of men, women and children. Of the
two hundred Indians on the island only four or
five men escaped by swimming to the mainland.
The same night a rancheria at the entrance of
Humboldt Bay and another at the mouth of Eel
river were attacked and about one hundred
Indians slaughtered. The fiends who commit-
ted these atrocities belonged to a secret or-
ganization. No rigid investigation was ever
made to find out who they were. The gran i

228

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

jury mildly condemned the outrage and there
the matter ended.

The Indians kept up hostilities, rendering
travel and traffic unsafe on the borders of Hum-
boldt, Klamath and Trinity counties. Governor
Stanford in 1863 issued a proclamation for the
enlistment of six companies of volunteers from
the six northwestern counties of the state.
These recruits were organized into what was
known as the Mountaineer battalion with Lieut. -
Col. Stephen G. Whipple in command. A num-
ber of Indian tribes united and a desultory war-
fare began. The Indians were worsted in nearly
every engagement. Their power was broken
and in February, 1865, fragments of the different
tribes were gathered into the Hoopa Valley
reservation. The Mountaineer battalion in what
was known as the "Two Years' War" settled the
Indian question from Shasta^ to the sea for all
time.

The Modoc war was the last of the Indian
disturbances in the state. The Modocs inhab-
ited the country about Rhett Lake and Lost
river in the northeast part of the state, bordering
on Oregon. Their history begins with the mas-
sacre of an immigrant train of sixty-five per-
sons, men, women and children, on their way
from Oregon to California. This brought upon
them a reprisal by the whites in which forty-
one out of forty-six Indians who had been in-
vited by Benjamin Wright to a pow wow after
they had laid aside their arms were set upon by
Wright and his companions with revolvers and
all killed but five. In 1864 a treaty had been
made with the Modocs by which they were to
reside on the Klamath reservation. But tiring-
of reservation life, under their leader, Captain
Jack, they returned to their old homes on Lost
river. A company of United States troops and
several volunteers who went along to see the
fun were sent to bring them back to the reser-
vation. They refused to go and a fight ensued
in which four of the volunteers and one of the
regulars were killed, and the troops retreated.
The Modocs after killing several settlers gath-
ered at the lava beds near Rhett Lake and
prepared for war.

Lieutenant-Colonel Wheaton with about four
hundred men attacked the Indians in the lava

beds January 17, 1873. Captain Jack had but
fifty-one men. When Wheaton retreated he had
lost thirty-five men killed and a number
wounded, but not an Indian had been hurt. A
few days after the battle a peace commission
was proposed at Washington. A. B. Meacham,
Jesse Applegate and Samuel Case were ap-
pointed. Elijah Steele of Yreka, who was on
friendly terms with the Indians, was sent for.
He visited the lava beds with the interpreter,
Fairchild, and had a big talk. He proposed to
them to surrender and they would be sent to
Angel Island near San Francisco, fed and cared
for and allowed to select any reservation they
wished. Steele, on his return to camp, reported
that the Indians accepted the terms, but Fair-
child said they had not and next day on his re-
turn Steele found out his mistake and barely
escaped with his life. Interviews continued
without obtaining any definite results, some of
the commission became disgusted and returned
home. General Canby, commanding the depart-
ment, had arrived and taken charge of affairs.
Commissioner Case resigned and Judge Ros-
borough was appointed in his place and the Rev.
E. Thomas, a doctor of divinity in the Metho-
dist church, was added to the commission. A
man by the name of Riddle and his wife Toby,
a Modoc, acted as go-betweens and negotiations
continued.

A pow wow was arranged at the council tent
at which all parties were to meet unarmed, but
Toby was secretly informed that it was the in-
tention of the Modocs to massacre the commis-
sioners as had been done to the Indian com-
missioners twenty years before by Benjamin
Wright and his gang. On April 10, while
Meacham and Dyer, the superintendent of the
Klamath reservation, who had joined the com-
missioners, were away from camp, the Rev.
Dr. Thomas made an agreement with a dele-
gation from Captain Jack for the commission
and General Canby to meet the Indians at the
council tent. Meacham on his return opposed
the arrangement, fearing treachery. The doctor
insisted that God had done a wonderful work
in the Modoc camp, but Meacham shocked the
pious doctor by saying "God had not been in
the Modoc camp this winter."

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

229

s Two of the Indian leaders, Boston Charley
and Bogus Charley, came to headquarters to
accompany the commission. Riddle and his
wife, Toby, bitterly opposed the commissioners'
going, telling them they would be killed, and
Toby going so far as to seize Meacham's horse
to prevent him from going, telling him, "You get
kill." Canby and the doctor insisted upon going,
despite all protests, the doctor saying, "Let us go
as we agreed and trust in God." Meacham and
Dyer secured derringers in their side pockets
before going. When the commissioners, the
interpreters, Riddle and his wife, reached the
council tent they found Captain Jack, Schonchin
John, Black Jim, Shancknasty Jim, Ellen's
Man and Hooker Jim sitting around a fire at
the council tent. Concealed behind some
rocks a short distance away were two young
Indians with a number of rifles. The two Char-
leys, Bogus and Boston, who had come with the
commissioners from headquarters, informed the
Indians that the commissioners were not armed.
The interview began. The Indians were very
insolent. Suddenly, at a given signal, the Indians
uttered a war whoop, and Captain Jack drew
a revolver from under his coat and shot Gen-
eral Canby. Boston Charley shot Dr. Thomas,
who fell, rose again, but was shot down
while begging for his life. The young Indians
had brought up the rifles and a fusillade was
begun upon the others. All escaped without in-
jury except Meacham, who, after running some
distance, was felled by a bullet fired by Hooker
Jim, and left for dead. He was saved from being
scalped by the bravery of Toby. He recovered,
however, although badly disfigured. While this

was going on, Curly Haired Doctor and several
other Modocs, with a white flag, inveigled Lieu-
tenants Boyle and Sherwood beyond the lines.
Seeing the Indians were armed, the officers
turned to flee, when Curly Haired Jack fired and
broke Lieutenant Sherwood's thigh. He died a
few days later. The troops were called to arms
when the firing began, but the Indians escaped
to the lava beds. After a few days' preparation,
Colonel Giilem, who was in command, began an
attack on the Indian stronghold. Their position
was shelled by mountain howitzers. In the
fighting, which lasted four days, sixteen soldiers
were killed and thirteen wounded. In a recon-
noissance under Captain Thomas a few days
later, a body of seventy troops and fourteen Warm
Spring Indians ran into an ambush of the In-
dians and thirteen soldiers, including Thomas,
were killed. Gen. Jefferson C. Davis was placed
in command. The Indians were forced out of the
lava beds, their water supply having been cut
off. They quarreled among themselves, broke
up into parties, were chased down and all cap-
tured. Captain Jack and Schonchin John, the
two leaders, were shackled together. General
Davis made preparations to hang these and >ix
or eight others, but orders from Washington
stopped him. The leading Indians were tried
by court-martial. Captain Jack, Schonchin
John, Black Jim and Boston Charley were hung,
two others were sentenced to imprisonment for
life. The other Modocs, men, women and chil-
dren, were sent to a fort in Nebraska and after-
wards transferred to the Quaw Paw Agency in
Indian Territory. This ended the Modoc war
and virtually put an end to the Modoc Indians.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

SOME POLITICAL HISTORY.

THE first Chinese emigrants to California
arrived in the brig Eagle, from Hong
Kong, in the month of February, 1848.
They were two men and one woman. This was
before the discovery of gold was known abroad.
What brought these waifs from the Flowery

Kingdom to California does not appear in the
record. February 1, 1849, there were fifty-four
Chinamen and one Chinawoman in (lie territory.
January I, 1850, seven hundred and eighty-nine
men and two women had arrived. January I,
1851, four thousand and eighteen men and seven

230

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

women; a year later their numbers had in-
creased to eight thousand one hundred and
twenty-one men and eight women; May 7, 1852,
eleven thousand seven hundred and eighty men
and seven women had found their way to the
land of gold. The Alta California, from which
I take these figures, estimated that between
seven and ten thousand more would arrive in
the state before January 1, 1853. The editor
sagely remarks: "No one fears danger or mis-
fortune from their excessive numbers." There
was no opposition to their coming; on the con-
trary, they were welcomed and almost lionized.
The Alta of April 27, 1851, remarks: "An
American barque yesterday brought eighty
worshippers of the sun, moon and many stars.
These Celestials make excellent citizens and we
are pleased to notice their daily arrival in large
numbers." The Alta describes a Great Chinese
meeting on Portsmouth Square, which took
place in 185 1. It seems to have been held for
the purpose of welcoming the Chinese to Cali-
fornia and at the same time doing missionary
work and distributing religious tracts among
them. The report says: "A large assemblage
of citizens and several ladies collected on the
plaza to witness the ceremonies. Ah Hee assem-
bled his division and Ah Sing inarched his into
Kearny street, where the two divisions united
and then marched to the square. Many carried
fans. There were several peculiar looking Chi-
namen among them. One, a very tall, old Celes-
tial with an extensive tail, excited universal at-
tention. He had a huge pair of spectacles upon
his nose, the glasses of which were about the
size of a telescope lens. He also had a singu-
larly colored fur mantle or cape upon his shoul-
ders and a long sort of robe. We presume he
must be a mandarin at least.

"Vice Consul F. A. Woodworth, His Honor,
Major J. W. Geary, Rev. Albert Williams, Rev.
A. Fitch and Rev. F. D. Hunt were present.
Ah Hee acted as interpreter. The Rev. Hunt
gave them some orthodox instruction in which
they were informed of the existence of a coun-
try where the China boys would never die; this
made them laugh quite heartily. Tracts, scrip-
tural documents, astronomical works, almanacs
and other useful religious and instructive docu-

ments printed in Chinese characters were dis-
tributed among them."

1 give the report of another meeting of "The
Chinese residents of San Francisco," taken
from the Alta of December 10, 1849. I quote
it. to show how the Chinese were regarded when
they first came to California and how they were
flattered and complimented by the presence of
distinguished citizens at their meetings. Their
treatment a few years later, when they were
mobbed and beaten in the streets for no fault
of theirs except for coming to a Christian coun-
try, must have given them a very poor opinion
of the white man's consistency. "A public
meeting of the Chinese residents of the town
was held on the evening of Monday, November
19, at the Canton Restaurant on Jackson street.
The following preamble and resolutions were
presented and adopted:

" 'Whereas, It becomes necessary for us,
strangers as we are in a strange land, unac-
quainted with the language and customs of our
adopted country, to have some recognized coun-
selor and advisor to whom we may all appeal
with confidence for wholesome instruction, and,

" 'Whereas, We should be at a loss as to what
course of action might be necessary for us to
pursue therefore,

" 'Resolved, That a committee of four be ap-
pointed to wait upon Selim E. Woodworth, Esq.,
and request him in behalf of the Chinese resi-
dents of San Francisco to act in the capacity of
arbiter and advisor for them.'

"Mr. Woodworth was waited upon by Ah Hee,
Jon Ling, Ah Ting and Ah Toon and kindly
consented to act. The whole affair passed off
in the happiest manner. Many distinguished
guests were present, Hon. J. W. Geary, alcalde;
E. H. Harrison, ex-collector of the port, and
others."

At the celebration of the admission of Cali-
fornia into the Union the "China Boys" were a
prominent feature. One report says: "The
Celestials had a banner of crimson satin on
which were some Chinese characters and the in-
scription 'China Boys.' They numbered about
fifty and were arrayed in the richest stuff and
commanded by their chief, Ah Sing."

While the "China Boys" were feted and flat-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

231

tered in San Francisco they were not so enthu-
siastically welcomed by the miners. The legis-
lature in 1850 passed a law fixing the rate of
license for a foreign miner at $20 per month.
This was intended to drive out and keep out of
the mines all foreigners, but the rate was so
excessively high that it practically nullified the
enforcement of the law and it was repealed in
1 85 1. As the Chinese were only allowed peace-
able possession of mines that would not pay
white man's wages they did not make fortunes
in the diggings. If by chance the Asiatics
should happen to strike it rich in ground aban-
doned by white men there was a class among
the white miners who did not hesitate to rob the
Chinamen of their ground.

As a result of their persecution in the mines
the Chinese flocked to San Francisco and it was
not long until that city had more "China Boys"
than it needed in its business. The legislature
of 1855 enacted a law that masters, owners or
consignors of vessels bringing to California
persons incompetent to become citizens under
the laws of the state should pay a fine of $50 for
every such person landed. A suit was brought
to test the validity of the act; it was declared
unconstitutional. In 1858 the foreign miner's
tax was $10 per month and as most of the other
foreigners who had arrived in California in the
early '50s had by this time become citizens by
naturalization the foreigners upon whom the
tax bore most heavily were the Chinese who
could not become citizens. As a consequence
many of them were driven out of the mines and
this again decreased the revenue of the mining
counties, a large part of which was made up of
poll tax and license.

The classes most bitterly opposed to the Chi-
nese in the mines were the saloon-keepers, the
gamblers and their constituents. While the
Chinaman himself is a most inveterate gambler
and not averse to strong drink he did not divest
himself of his frugal earnings in the white man's
saloon or gambling den, and the gentry who
kept these institutions were the first, like Bill
Nye in Bret Harte's poem, to raise the cry,
"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor."
While the southern politicians who were the
rulers of the state before the Civil war were

opposed to the Chinese and legislated against
them, it was not done in the interest of the white
laborer. An act to establish a coolie system of
servile labor was introduced in the pro-slavery
legislature of 1854. It was intended as a sub-
stitute for negro slavery. Senator Roach, a free
state man, exposed its iniquity. It was defeated.
The most intolerant and the most bitter oppo-
nents of the Chinese then and later when opposi-
tion had intensified were certain servile classes of
Europeans who in their native countries had al-
ways been kept in a state of servility to the aris-
tocracy, but when raised to the dignity of Amer-
ican citizens by naturalization proceeded to
celebrate their release from their former serf-
dom by persecuting the Chinese, whom they re-
garded as their inferiors. The outcry these peo-
ple made influenced politicians, who pandered to
them for the sake of their votes to make laws
and ordinances that were often burlesques on
legislation.

In 1870 the legislature enacted a law impos-
ing a penalty of not less than $1,000 nor more
than $5,000 or imprisonment upon any one
bringing to California any subject of China or
Japan without first presenting evidence of his
or her good character to the commissioner of
immigration. The supreme court decided the
law unconstitutional. Laws were passed pro-
hibiting the employment of Chinese on the pub-
lic works; prohibiting them from owning real
estate and from obtaining licenses for certain
kinds of business. The supervisors of San Fran-
cisco passed an ordinance requiring that the
hair of any male prisoner convicted of an of-
fense should be cut within one inch of his head.
This, of course, was aimed at Chinese convicts
and intended to deprive them of their queues
and degrade them in the estimation of their peo-
ple. It was known as the Pig Tail Ordinance;
the mayor vetoed it. Another piece of class
legislation by the San Francisco supervisors im-
posed a license of $15 a quarter on laundries
using no horses, while a laundry using a one-
horse wagon paid but $2 per quarter. The Chi-
nese at this time (1876) did not use horses in
their laundry business. The courts decided
against this ordinance.

Notwithstanding the laws and ordinances

232

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

against them the Chinese continued to come
and they found employment of some kind to
keep them from starving. They were indus-
trious and economical; there were no Chinese
tramps. Although they filled a want in the
state, cheap and reliable labor, at the beginning
of its railroad and agricultural development,
they were not desirable citizens. Their habits
and morals were bad. Their quarters in the
cities reeked with filth and immorality. They
maintained their Asiatic customs and despised
the "white devils" among whom they lived,
which, by the way, was not strange considering
the mobbing and maltreatment they received
from the other aliens. They made merchandise
of their women and carried on a revolting sys-
tem of female slavery.

The Burlingame treaty guaranteed mutual
protection to the citizens of China and the
United States on each other's soil ; to freedom in
religious opinions; to the right to reside in
either country at will and other privileges ac-
corded to civilized nations. Under this treaty
the Chinese could not be kept out of California
and agitation was begun for the modification or
entire abrogation of the treaty.

For a number of years there had been a steady
decline in the price of labor. Various causes
had contributed to this. The productiveness of
the mines had decreased; railroad communica-
tion with the east had brought in a number of
workmen and increased competition ; the efforts
of the labor unions to decrease the hours of labor
and still keep up the wages at the old standard
had resulted in closing up some of the manu-
facturing establishments, the proprietors finding
it impossible to compete with eastern factories.
All these and other causes brought about a de-
pression in business and brought on in 1877-78
a labor agitation that shook the foundations of
our social fabric. The hard times and decline in
wages was charged against the Chinese. No
doubt the presence of the Mongolians in Cali-
fornia had considerable to do with it and par-
ticularly in the lower grades of employment
but the depression was mainly caused from
over-production and the financial crisis of 1873,
which had affected the whole United States.
Another cause local to California was the wild

mania for stock gambling that had prevailed in
California for a number of years. The bonanza
kings of the Washoe by getting up corners in
stocks running up fraudulent values and then
unloading on outside buyers had impoverished
thousands of people of small means and enriched
themselves without any return to their dupes.

Hard times always brings to the front a class
of noisy demagogues who with no remedy to
prescribe increase the discontent by vitupera-
tive abuse of everybody outside of their sym-
pathizers. The first of the famous sand lot mass
meetings of San Francisco was held July 23,
1877, on a vacant lot on the Market street
side of the city hall. Harangues were made and
resolutions passed denouncing capitalists, de-
claring against subsidies to steamship and rail-
road lines, declaring that the reduction of wages
was part of a conspiracy for the destruction of
the republic and that the military should not be
employed against strikers. An anti-coolie club
was formed and on that and the two succeeding
evenings a number of Chinese laundries were
destroyed. In a fight between the police (aided
by the committee of safety) and the rioters sev-
eral of the latter were killed. Threats were
made to destroy the railroad property and burn
the vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Com-
pany unless the Chinese in their employ were
immediately discharged.

Among the agitators that this ebullition of dis-
content threw to the front was an Irish dray-
man named Dennis Kearney. He was shrewd
enough to see that some notoriety and political
capital could be made by the organization of a
Workingmen's party.

On the 5th of October a permanent organiza-
tionof the Workingmen's party of California was
effected. Dennis Kearney was chosen president,
J. G. Day, vice-president, and H. L. Knight, sec-
retary. The principles of the party were the con-
densed essence of selfishness. The working
classes were to be elevated at the expense of
every other. "We propose to elect none but com-
petent workingmen and their friends to any of-
fice whatever." "The rich have ruled us till they
have ruined us." "The republic must and shall
be preserved, and only workingmen will do it."
"This party will exhaust all peaceable means of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

attaining its ends, but it will not be denied jus-
tice when it has the power to enforce it." "It
will encourage no riot or outrage, but it will
not volunteer to repress or put down or arrest,
or prosecute the hungry and impatient who
manifest their hatred of the Chinamen by a cru-
sade against John or those who employ him."
These and others as irrelevant and immaterial
were the principles of the Workingmen's party
that was to bring the millennium. The move-
ment spread rapidly, clubs were formed in every
ward in San Francisco and there were organiza-
tions in all the cities of the state. The original
leaders were all of foreign birth, but when the
movement became popular native born dema-
gogues, perceiving in it an opportunity to ob-
tain office, abandoned the old parties and joined
the new.

Kearney now devoted his whole time to agi-
tation, and the applause he received from his
followers pampered his inordinate conceit. His
language was highly incendiary. He advised
every workingman to own a musket and one
hundred rounds of ammunition and urged the
formation of military companies. He posed as
a reformer and even hoped for martyrdom. In
one of his harangues he said: "If I don't get
killed I will do more than any reformer in the
history of the world. I hope I will be assassi-
nated, for the success of the movement depends
on that." The incendiary rant of Kearney and
his fellows became alarming. It was a tame
meeting, at which no "thieving millionaire,
scoundrelly official or extortionate railroad mag-
nate" escaped lynching by the tongues of la-
borite reformers. The charitable people of the
city had raised by subscription $20,000 to al-
leviate the prevailing distress among the poor.
It was not comforting to a rich man to hear
himself doomed to "hemp! hemp! hemp!"
simply because by industry, economy and enter-
prise he had made a fortune. It became evident
that if Kearney and his associates were allowed
to talk of hanging men and burning the city
some of their dupes would put in practice the
teachings of their leaders. The supervisors,
urged on by the better class of citizens, passed
an ordinance called by the sand-lotters "Gibbs'
gag law." On the 29th of October, Kearney and

his fellow agitators, with a mob of two or three
thousand followers, held a meeting on Nob Hill,
where Stanford, Crocker, Hopkins and other
railroad magnates had built palatial residences.
He roundly denounced as thieves the nabobs of
Nob Hill and declared that they would soon feel
the power of the workingmen. W hen li is party
was thoroughly organized they would march
through the city and compel the thieves to give
up their plunder; that he would lead them to the
city hall, clear out the police, hang the pros-
ecuting attorney, burn every book that had a
particle of law in it, and then enact new laws
for the workingmen. These and other utter-
ances equally inflammatory caused his arrest
while addressing a meeting on the borders of
the Barbary coast. Trouble was expected, but
he quietly submitted and was taken to jail and a
few days later Day, Knight, C. C. O'Donnell and
Charles E. Pickett were arrested on charges of
inciting riot and taken to jail. A few days in
jail cooled them off and they began to "squeal."
They addressed a letter to the mayor, saying
their utterances had been incorrectly reported
by the press and that if released they were will-
ing to submit to any wise measure to allay the
excitement. They were turned loose after two
weeks' imprisonment and their release was cele-
brated on Thanksgiving Day, November 29, by
a grand demonstration of sand lotters — seven
thousand of whom paraded the streets.

It was not long before Kearney and his fel-
lows were back on the sand lots hurling out
threats of lynching, burning and blowing up.
On January 5 the grand jury presented indict-
ments against Kearney, Wellock, Knight.
O'Donnell and Pickett. They were all released
on the rulings of the judge of the criminal court
on the grounds that no actual riot had taken
place.

The first victory of the so-called Working-
men's party was the election of a state senator in
Alameda county to fill a vacancy caused by the
death of Senator Porter. An individual by the
name of John W. Bones was elected. On ac-
count of his being long and lean he was known
as Barebones and sometimes Praise God Bare-
bones. His onlv services in the senate were the
perpetration of some doggerel verses and a

234

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

speech or two on Kearney's theme, "The Chi-
nese Must Go." At the election held June 19,
1878, to choose delegates to a constitutional
convention of the one hundred and fifty-two
delegates the Workingmen elected fifty-seven,
thirty-one of whom were from San Francisco.
The convention met at Sacramento, September
28, 1878, and continued to sit in all one hundred
and fifty-seven days. It was a mixed assem-
blage. There were some of the ablest men in
the state in it, and there were some of the most
narrow minded and intolerant bigots there. The
Workingmen flocked by themselves, while the
non-partisans, the Republicans and Democrats,
for the most part, acted in unison. Opposition
to the Chinese, which was a fundamental prin-
ciple of the Workingmen's creed, was not con-
fined to them alone; some of the non-partisans
were as bitter in their hatred of the Mongolians
as the Kearneyites. Some of the crudities pro-
posed for insertion in the new constitution were
laughable for their absurdity. One sand lotter
proposed to amend the bill of rights, that all men
are by nature free and independent, to read, "All
men who are capable of becoming citizens of the
United States are by nature free and inde-
pendent." One non-partisan wanted to incor-
porate into the fundamental law of the state
Kearney's slogan, "The Chinese Must Go."

After months of discussion the convention
evolved a constitution that the ablest men in
that body repudiated, some of them going so far
as to take the stump against it. But at the elec-
tion it carried by a large majority. Kearney
continued his sand lot harangues. In the sum-
mer of 1879 he made a trip through the south-
ern counties of the state, delivering his diatribes
against the railroad magnates, the land mo-
nopolists and the Chinese. At the town of Santa
Ana, now the county seat of Orange county, in
his harangue he made a vituperative attack
upon the McFadden Brothers, who a year or
two before had built a steamer and run it in op-
position to the regular coast line steamers until
■ forced to sell it on account of losses incurred by
the competition. Kearney made a number of
false and libelous statements in regard to the
transaction. While he was waiting for the stage
to San Diego in front of the hotel he was con-

fronted by Rule, an employee of the McFad-
den's, with an imperious demand for the name of
Kearney's informant. Kearney turned white
with fear and blubbered out something about
not giving away his friends. Rule struck him
a blow that sent him reeling against the build-
ing. Gathering himself together he made a rush
into the hotel, drawing a pistol as he ran. Rule
pursued him through the dining room and out
across a vacant lot and into a drug store, where
he downed him and, holding him down with his
knee on his breast, demanded the name of his
informer. One of the slandered men pulled
Rule off the "martyr" and Kearney, with a face
resembling a beefsteak, took his departure to
San DiegO'. From that day on he ceased his
vituperative attacks on individuals. He had met
the only argument that could convince him of
the error of his ways. He lost caste with his
fellows. This braggadocio, who had boasted of
leading armies to conquer the enemies of the
Workingmen, with a pistol in his hand had
ignominiously fled from an unarmed man and
had taken a humiliating punishment without a
show of resistance. His following began to de-
sert him and Kearney went if the Chinese did
not. The Workingmen's party put up a state
ticket in 1879, but it was beaten at the polls and
went to pieces. In 1880 James Angell of Mich-
igan, John F. Swift of California, and William
H. Trescott of South Carolina were appointed
commissioners to proceed to China for the pur-
pose of forming new treaties. An agreement
was reached with the Chinese authorities by
which laborers could be debarred for a certain
period from entering the United States. Those
in the country were all allowed the rights that
aliens of other countries had. The senate ratified
the treaty May 5th, 1881.

The following is a list of the governors of Cal-
ifornia, Spanish, Mexican and American, with
date of appointment or election: Spanish:
Caspar de Portola, 1767; Felipe Barri, 1771;
Felipe de Neve, 1774; Pedro Fages, 1790; Jose
Antonio Romeu, 1790; Jose Joaquin de Ar-
rillaga, 1792; Diego de Borica, 1794; Jose Joa-
quin de Arrillaga, 1800; Jose Arguello, 1814:
Pablo Vicente de Sola, 181 5. Mexican gov-
ernors: Pablo Vicente de Sola, 1822; Luis

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

286

Arguello, 1823; Jose Maria Echeandia, 1825;
Manuel Victoria, 1831; Pio Pico, 1832; Jose
Maria Echeandia, Agustin Zamorano, 1832 ;
Jose Figueroa, 1833; Jose Castro, 1835; Nicolas
Gutierrez, 1836; Mariano Chico, 1836; Nicolas
Gutierrez, 1836; Juan B. Alvarado, 1836; Man-
uel Micheltorena, 1842; Pio Pico, 1845. Amer-
ican military governors: Commodore Robert
F. Stockton, 1846; Col. John C. Fremont, Jan-
uary, 1847; Gen. Stephen W. Kearny, March
1, 1847; Col. Richard B. Mason, May 31, 1847;
Gen. Bennet Riley, April 13, 1849. American
governors elected: Peter H. Burnett, 1849.
John McDougal, Lieutenant-governor, became
governor on resignation of P. H. Burnett in
January, 1851; John Bigler, 1851; John Bigler,

1853; J. Neely Johnson, 1855; John B. Wcllcr,
1857; M. S. Latham, 1859; John G. Downey,
lieutenant-governor, became governor in 1859
by election of Latham to United States senate;
Leland Stanford, 1861 ; Frederick F. Low, 1863;
Henry H. Haight, 1867; Xewton Booth, 187 1 ;
Romualdo Pacheco, lieutenant governor, be-
came governor February, 1875, on election of
Booth to the United States senate; William Ir-
win, 1875; George C. Perkins, 1879; George
Stoneman, 1882; Washington Bartlctt, [886;
Robert W. Waterman, lieutenant-governor, be-
came governor September 12, 1887, upon the
death of Governor Bartlett ; II. II. Markham,
1890; James H. Budd, 1894; Henry T. Gage,
1898 ; George C. Pardee, 1902 ; James H. Gillctt,
1906.

CHAPTER XXXV.

EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.

THE Franciscans, unlike the Jesuits, were
not the patrons of education. They
bent all their energies towards pros-
elyting. Their object was to fit their converts
for the next world. An ignorant soul might
be as happy in paradise as the most learned.
Why educate the neophyte? He was converted,
and then instructed in the work assigned him
at the mission. There were no public schools
at the missions. A few of the brightest of
the neophytes, who were trained to sing in
the church choirs, were taught to read, but the
great mass of them, even those of the third gen-
eration, born and reared at the missions, were
as ignorant of book learning as were their great-
grandfathers, who ran naked among the oak
trees of the mesas and fed on acorns.

Nor was there much attention paid to edu-
cation among the gente de razon of the pre-
sidios and pueblos. But few of the common
people could read and write. Their ancestors
had made their way in the world without book
learning. Why should the child know more
than the parent? And trained to have great filial
regard for his parent, it was not often that
the progeny aspired to rise higher in the scale

of intelligence than his progenitor. Of the
eleven heads of families who founded Los An-
geles, not one could sign his name to the title
deed of his house lot. Nor were these an ex-
ceptionally ignorant collection of hombres. Out
of fifty men comprising the Monterey company
in 1785, but fourteen could write. In the com-
pany stationed at San Francisco in 1794 not a
soldier among them could read or write; and
forty years later of one hundred men at Sonoma
not one could write his name.

The first community want the American pio-
neers supplied was the school house. Wher-
ever the immigrants from the New England
and the middle states planted a settlement, there,
at the same time, they planted a school house.
The first community want that the Spanish
pabladores (colonists) supplied was a church.
The school house was not wanted or if wanted it
was a long felt want that was rarely or never
satisfied. At the time of the acquisition of Cal-
ifornia by the Americans, seventy-seven years
from the date of its first settlement, there was
not a public school house owned by any pre-
sidio, pueblo or city in all its territory.

The first public school in California was

230

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

opened in San Jose in December, 1794, seven-
teen years after the founding of that pueblo.
The pioneer teacher of California was Manuel
de Vargas, a retired sergeant of infantry. The
school was opened in the public granary.
Vargas, in 1795, was offered $250 to open a
school in San Diego. As this was higher wages
than he was receiving he accepted the offer.
Jose Manuel Toca, a gamute or ship boy, ar-
rived on a Spanish transport in 1795 and the
same year was employed at Santa Barbara as
schoolmaster at a yearly salary of $125. Thus
the army and the navy pioneered education in
California.

Governor Borica, the founder of public
schools in California, resigned in 1800 and was
succeeded by Arrillaga. Governor Arrillaga, if
not opposed to, was at least indifferent to the
education of the common people. He took life
easy and the schools took long vacations; in-
deed, it was nearly all vacation during his term.
Governor Sola, the successor of Arrillaga, made
an effort to establish public schools, but the in-
difference of the people discouraged him. In
the lower pueblo, Los Angeles, the first school
was opened in 1817, thirty-six years after the
founding of the town. The first teacher there
was Maximo Piha, an invalid soldier. He re-
ceived $140 a year for his services as school-
master. If the records are correct, his was the
only school taught in Los Angeles during the
Spanish regime. One year of schooling to forty
years of vacation, there was no educational
cramming in those days. The schoolmasters of
the Spanish era were invalid soldiers, possessed
of that dangerous thing, a "little learning;'' and
it was very little indeed. About all they could
teach was reading, writing and the doctrina
Christiana. They were brutal tyrants and their
school government a military despotism. They
did not spare the rod or the child, either. The
rod was too mild an instrument of punishment.
Their implement of torture was a cat-o'-nine-
tails, made of hempen cords with iron points.
To fail in learning the doctrina Christiana was
an unpardonable sin. For this, for laughing
aloud, playing truant or other offenses no more
heinous, the guilty boy "was stretched face
downward upon a bench with a handkerchief

thrust into his mouth as a gag and lashed with a
dozen or more blows until the blood ran down
his little lacerated back." If he could not im-
bibe the Christian doctrine in any other way,
it was injected into him with the points of the
lash.

Mexico did better for education in California
than Spain. The school terms were lengthened
and the vacation shortened proportionally. Gov-
ernor Echeandia, a man hated by the friars, was
an enthusiastic friend of education. "He be-
lieved in the gratuitous and compulsory educa-
tion of rich and poor, Indians and gente de
razon alike." He held that learning was the
corner-stone of a people's wealth and it was the
duty of the government to foster education.
When the friars heard of his views "they called
upon God to pardon the unfortunate ruler un-
able to comprehend how vastly superior a re-
ligious education was to one merely secular.*
Echeandia made a brave attempt to establish a
public school system in the territory. He de-
manded of the friars that they establish a school
at each mission for the neophytes; they prom-
ised, but, with the intention of evading, a show
was made of opening schools. Soon it was re-
ported that the funds were exhausted and the
schools had to close for want of means to sup-
port them. Nor was Echeandia more successful
with the people. He issued an order to the
commanding officers at the presidios to compel
parents to send their children to school. The
school at Monterey was opened, the alcalde act-
ing as schoolmaster. The school furniture con-
sisted of one table and the school books were
one arithmetic and four primers. The school
funds were as meager as the school furniture.
Echeandia, unable to contend against the enmity
of the friars, the indifference of the parents and
the lack of funds, reluctantly abandoned his
futile fight against ignorance.

One of the most active and earnest friends of
the public schools during the Mexican era was
the much abused Governor Micheltorena. He
made an earnest effort to establish a public
school system in California. Through his efforts
schools were established in all the principal

*Bancroft's California Pastoral.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

towns and a guarantee of $500 from the ter-
ritorial funds promised to each school. Michel-
torena promulgated what might be called the
first school law of California. It was a decree
issued May 1, 1844, and consisted of ten articles,
which prescribed what should be taught in the
schools, school hours, school age of the pupils
and other regulations. Article 10 named the
most holy virgin of Guadalupe as patroness of
the schools. Her image was to be placed in
each school. But, like all his predecessors,
Micheltorena failed; the funds were soon ex-
hausted and the schools closed.

Even had the people been able to read there
would have been nothing for them to read but
religious books. The friars kept vigilant watch
that no interdicted books were brought into the
country. If any were found they were seized
and publicly burned. Castro, Alvarado and Val-
lejo were at one time excommunicated for read-
ing Rousseau's works, Telemachus and other
books on the prohibited list. Alvarado having
declined to pay Father Duran some money he
owed him because it was a sin to have anything
to do with an excommunicated person, and
therefore it would be a sin for the father to take
money from him, the padre annulled the sen-
tence, received the money and gave Alvarado
permission to read anything he wished.

During the war for the conquest of California
and for some time afterwards the schools were
all closed. The wild rush to the gold mines in
1848 carried away the male population. No one
would stay at home and teach school for the
paltry pay given a schoolmaster. The ayunta-
miento of Los Angeles in the winter of 1849-50
appointed a committee to establish a school.
After a three months' hunt the committee re-
ported "that an individual had just presented
himself who, although he did not speak English,
yet could he teach the children many useful
things; and besides the same person had man-
aged to get the refusal of Mrs. Pollerena's house
for school purpose." At the next meeting of the
ayuntamiento the committee reported that the
individual who had offered to teach had left for
the mines and neither a school house nor a
schoolmaster could be found.

In June, 1850, the ayuntamiento entered into

a contract with Francisco Bustamente, an ex-
soldier, "to teach to the children first, second
and third lessons and likewise to read script, to
write and count and so much as I may be com-
petent to teach them orthography and good
morals." Bustamente was to receive $60 per
month and $20 for house rent. This was the
first school opened in Los Angeles after the
conquest.

''The first American school in San Francisco
and, we believe, in California, was a merely pri-
vate enterprise. It was opened by a Mr. Mars-
ton from one of the Atlantic states in April,
1847, m a small shanty which stood on the block
between Broadway and Pacific streets, west of
Dupont street. There he collected some twent)
or thirty pupils, whom he continued to teach for
almost a whole year, his patrons paying for tui-
tion."*

In the fall of 1847 a school house was built
on the southwest corner of Portsmouth square,
fronting on Clay street. The money to build it
was raised by subscription. It was a very mod-
est structure — box shaped with a door and two
windows in the front and two windows in each
end. It served a variety of purposes besides that
of a school house. It was a public hall for all
kinds of meetings. Churches held service in it.
The first public amusements were given in it.
At one time it was used for a court room. The
first meeting to form a state government was
held in it. It was finally degraded to a police
office and a station house. For some time after
it was built no school was kept in it for want of
funds.

On the 2 1st of February, 1848, a town meet-
ing was called for the election of a board of
school trustees and Dr. F. Fourguard, Dr. J.
Townsend, C. L. Ross, J. Serrini and William
H. Davis were chosen. On the 3d of April fol-
lowing these trustees opened a school in the
school house under the charge of Thomas
Douglas, A. M., a graduate of Yale College and
an experienced teacher of high reputation. The
board pledged him a salary of $1,000 per an-
num and fixed a tariff of tuition to aid towards
its payment: and the town council, afterwards,

*Annals of San Francisco.

238

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

to make up any deficiency, appropriated to the
payment of the teacher of the public school in
this place $200 at the expiration of twelve
months from the commencement of the school.
"Soon after this Mr. Marston discontinued his
private school and Mr. Douglas collected some
forty pupils."*

The school flourished for eight or ten weeks.
Gold had been discovered and rumors were
coming thick and fast of fortunes made in a day.
A thousand dollars a year looked large to Mr.
Douglas when the contract was made, but in the
light of recent events it looked rather small.
A man in the diggings might dig out $1,000 in a
week. So the schoolmaster laid down the
pedagogical birch, shouldered his pick and hied
himself away to the diggings. In the rush for
gold, education was forgotten. December 12,

1848, Charles W. H. Christian reopened the
school, charging tuition at the rate of $10. Evi-
dently he did not teach longer than it took him
to earn money to reach the mines. April 23,

1849, tne Rev. Albert Williams, pastor of the
First Presbyterian church, obtained the use of
the school house and opened a private school,
charging tuition. He gave up school teaching
to attend to his ministerial duties. In the fall
of '49 John C. Pelton, a Massachusetts school-
master, arrived in San Francisco and December
26 opened a school with three pupils in the Bap-
tist church on Washington street. He fitted up
the church with writing tables and benches at
his own expense, depending on voluntary con-
tributions for his support. In the spring of
1850 he applied to the city council for relief and
for his services and that of his wife he received
$500 a month till the summer of 185 1, when he
closed his school.

Col. T. J. Nevins, in June, 1850, obtained rent
free the use of a building near the present inter-
section of Mission and Second streets for school
purposes. He employed a Mr. Samuel New-
ton as teacher. The school was opened July
13. The school passed under the supervision
of several teachers. The attendance was small
at first and the school was supported by con-
tributions, but later the council voted an ap-

Annals of San Francisco.

propriation. The school was closed in 1851.
Colonel Nevins, in January, 1851, secured a
fifty-vara lot at Spring Valley on the Presidio
road and built principally by subscription a
large school building, employed a teacher and
opened a free school, supported by contributions.
The building was afterwards leased to the city
to be used for a free school, the term of the
lease running ninety-nine years. This was the
first school building in which the city had an
ownership. Colonel Nevins prepared an ordi-
nance for the establishment, regulation and
support of free common schools in the city.
The ordinance was adopted by the city council
September 25, 185 1, and was the first ordinance
establishing free schools and providing for their
maintenance in San Francisco.

A bill to provide for a public school system
was introduced in the legislature of 1850, but
the committee on education reported that it
would be two or three years before any means
would become available from the liberal pro-
visions of the constitution; in the meantime
the persons who had children to educate could
do it out of their own pockets. So all action
was postponed and the people who had children
paid for their tuition or let them run without
schooling.

The first school law was passed in 1851. It
was drafted mainly by G. B. Lingley, John C.
Pelton and the superintendent of public instruc-
tion, J. G. Marvin. It was revised and amended
by the legislatures of 1852 and 1853. The state
school fund then was derived from the sale and
rental of five hundred thousand acres of state
land; the estates of deceased persons escheated
to the state; state poll tax and a state tax of
five cents on each $100 of assessed property.
Congress in 1853 granted to California the 16th
and 36th sections of the public lands for school
purposes. The total amount of this grant was
six million seven hundred and sixty-five thou-
sand five hundred and four acres, of which
forty-six thousand and eighty acres were to be
deducted for the founding of a state university
or college and six thousand four hundred acres
for public buildings.

The first apportionment of state funds was
made in 1854. The amount of state funds for

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

that year was $52,961. The county and mu-
nicipal school taxes amounted to $157,702.
These amounts were supplemented by rate bills
to the amount of $42,557. In 1856 the state
fund had increased to $69,961, while rate bills
had decreased to $28,619. That year there were
thirty thousand and thirty-nine children of
school age in the state, of these only about
fifteen thousand were enrolled in the schools.

In the earlier years, following the American
conquest, the schools were confined almost en-
tirely to the cities. The population in the coun-
try districts was too sparse to maintain a school.
The first school house in Sacramento was built
in 1849. It was located on I street. C. H. T.
Palmer opened school in it in August. It was
supported by rate bills and donations. He gath-
ered together about a dozen pupils. The school
was soon discontinued. Several other parties
in succession tried school keeping in Sacra-
mento, but did not make a success of it. It was
not until 185 1 that a permanent school was es-
tablished. A public school was taught in Mon-
terey in 1849 by Rev. Willey. The school was
kept in Colton Hall. The first public school
house in Los Angeles was built in 1854. Hugh
Overns taught the first free school there in 1850.

The amount paid for teachers' salaries in 1854
was $85,860; in 1906 it reached $5,666,045. The
total expenditures in 1854 for school purposes
amounted to $275,606; in 1906 to $8,727,008.
The first high school in the state was established,
in San Francisco in 1856. In 1906 there were
one hundred and ninety high schools, with an
attendance of eighteen thousand eight hundred
and seventy-nine students. Four millions of dol-
lars were invested in high school buildings, fur-
niture and grounds, and one thousand teachers
were employed in these schools.

THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC.

This institution was chartered in August,
185 1, as the California Wesleyan College, which
name was afterwards changed by act of the leg-
islature to that it now bears. The charter was
obtained under the general law of the state as
it then was, and on the basis of a subscription
of $27,500 and a donation of some ten acres of
land adjacent to the village of Santa Clara. A

school building was erected in which the pre-
paratory department was opened in May, 1852,
under the charge of Rev. E. Banister as prin-
cipal, aided by two assistant teachers, and be-
fore the end of the first session had over sixty
pupils. Near the close of the following year
another edifice was so far completed that the
male pupils were transferred to it, and the Fe-
male Collegiate Institute, with its special course
of study, was organized and continued in the
original building. In 1854 the classes of the
college proper were formed and the requisite
arrangement with respect to president, faculty,
and course of study made. In 1858 two young
men, constituting the first class, received the de-
gree of A. B., they being the first to receive
that honor from any college in California. In
1865 the board of trustees purchased the Stock-
ton rancho, a large body of land adjoining the
town of Santa Clara. This was subdivided into
lots and small tracts and sold at a profit. By
this means an endowment was secured and an
excellent site for new college building obtained.

THE COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA.

The question of founding a college or uni-
versity in California had been discussed early in
1849, before the assembling of the constitutional
convention at San Jose. The originator of the
idea was the Rev. Samuel II. Willey, D. D., of
the Presbyterian church. At that time he was
stationed at Monterey. The first legislature
passed a bill providing for the granting of col-
lege charters. The bill required that application
should be made to the supreme court, which was
to determine whether the property possessed bv
the proposed college was worth $20,000, and
whether in other respects a charter should be
granted. A body of land for a college site had
been offered by James Stokes and Kimball H.
Dimmick to be selected from a large tract thev
owned on the Guadalupe river, near San J06&
When application was made for a college char-
ter the supreme court refused to give a charter
to the applicants on the plea that the land
was unsurveyed and the title not fully deter-
mined.

The Rev. Henry Durant, who had at one time
been a tutor in Yale College, came to California

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

in 1S53 to engage in teaching. At a meeting
of the presbytery of San PTancisco and the Con-
gregational Association of California held in

o o

Nevada City in May, 1853, which Mr. Durant
attended, it was decided to establish an acad-
emy at Oakland. There were but few houses
in Oakland then and the only communication
with San Francisco was by means of a little
steamer that crossed the bay two or three times
a day. A house was obtained at the corner of
Broadway and Fifth street and the academy
opened with three pupils. A site was selected
for the school, which, when the streets were
opened, proved to be four blocks, located be-
tween Twelfth and Fourteenth, Franklin and
Harrison streets. The site of Oakland at that
time was covered with live oaks and the sand
was knee deep. Added to other discourage-
ments, titles were in dispute and squatters were
seizing upon the vacant lots. A building was
begun for the school, the money ran out and
the property was in danger of seizure on a me-
chanics' lien, but was rescued by the bravery
and resourcefulness of Dr. Durant.

In 1855 the College of California was char-
tered and a search begun for a permanent site.
A number were offered at various places in the
state. The trustees finally selected the Berkeley
site, a tract of one hundred and sixty acres on
Strawberry creek near Oakland, opposite the
Golden Gate. The college school in Oakland
was flourishing. A new building, Academy
Hall, was erected in 1858. A college faculty
was organized. The Rev. Henry Durant and
the Rev. Martin Kellogg were chosen pro-
fessors and the first college class was organized
in June, i860. The college classes were taught
in the buildings of the college school, which
were usually called the College of California.
The college classes were small and the endow-
ment smaller. The faculty met with many dis-
couragements. It became evident that the in-
stitution could never become a prominent one
in the educational field with the limited means
of support it could command. In 1863 the idea
of a state university began to be agitated. A bill
was passed by the state legislature in 1866, de-
voting to the support of a narrow polytechnical
school, the federal land grants to California for

the support of agricultural schools and a college
of mechanics. The trustees of the College of
California proposed in 1867 to transfer to the
state the college site at Berkeley, opposite the
Golden Gate, together with all the other assets
remaining after the debts were paid, on con-
dition that the state would build a University of
California on the site at Berkeley, which should
be a classical and technological college.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.

A bill for the establishing of a state university
was introduced in the legislature March 5, 1868,
by Hon. John W. Dwindle of Alameda county.
After some amendments it was finally passed,
March 21, and on the 27th of the same month a
bill was passed making an appropriation for the
support of the institution.

The board of regents of the university was
organized June 9, 1868, and the same day Gen.
George B. McClellan was elected president of
the university, but at that time being engaged in
building Stevens Battery at New York he de-
clined the honor. September 23, 1869, the
scholastic exercises of the university were be-
gun in the buildings of the College of Califor-
nia in Oakland and the first university class was
graduated in June, 1873. The new buildings of
the university at Berkeley were occupied in
September, 1873. Prof. John Le Conte was act-
ing president for the first year. Dr. Henry
Durant was chosen to fill that position and was
succeeded by D. C. Gilman in 1872. The corner-
stone of the Agricultural College, called the
South Hall, was laid in August, 1872, and that
of the North Hall in the spring of 1873.

The university, as now constituted, consists
of Colleges of Letters, Social Science, Agricul-
ture, Mechanics, Mining, Civil Engineering,
Chemistry and Commerce, located at Berkeley;
the Lick Astronomical Department at Mount
Hamilton; and the professional and affiliated
colleges in San Francisco, namely, the Hastings
College of Law, the Medical Department, the
Post-Graduate Medical Department, the Col-
lege of Dentistry and Pharmacy, the Veterinary
Department and the Mark Hopkins Institute of
Art. The total value of the property belonging
to the university at this time is about $5,000,000

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

241

and the endowment funds nearly $3,000,000.
The total income in 1900 was $475,254.

LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

"When the intention of Senator Stanford to
found a university in memory of his lamented
son was first announced, it was expected from
the broad and comprehensive views which he
was known to entertain upon the subject, that
his plans, when formed, would result in no ordi-
nary college endowment or educational scheme,
but when these plans were laid before the people
their magnitude was so far beyond the most ex-
travagant of public anticipation that all were as-
tonished at the magnificence of their aggregate,
the wide scope of their detail and the absolute
grandeur of their munificence. The brief his-
tory of California as an American state com-
prises much that is noble and great, but nothing
in that history will compare in grandeur with
this act of one of her leading citizens. The
records of history may be searched in vain for
a parallel to this gift of Senator Stanford to the
state of his adoption. * * * By this act
Senator Stanford will not only immortalize the
memory of his son, but will erect for himself a
monument more enduring than brass or marble,
for it will be enshrined in the hearts of succeed-
ing generations for all time to come."*

Senator Stanford, to protect the endowments
he proposed to make, prepared a bill, which was
passed by the legislature, approved by the gov-
ernor and became a law March 9, 1885. It is
entitled "An act to advance learning, the arts
and sciences and to promote the public welfare,
by providing for the conveyance, holding and
protection of property, and the creation of trusts
for the founding, endowment, erection and
maintenance within this state of universities,
colleges, schools, seminaries of learning, me-
chanical institutes, museums and galleries of
art."

Section 2 specifies how a grant for the above
purposes may be made: "Any person desiring
in his lifetime to promote the public welfare by
founding, endowing and having maintained
within this state a university, college, school,

* Monograph of Leland Stanford Junior University.

seminary of learning, mechanical institute, mu-
seum or gallery of art or any or all thereof, may,
to that end, and for such purpose, by grant in
writing, convey to a trustee, or any number of
trustees named in such grant (and their suc-
cessors), any property, real or personal, belong-
ing to such person, and situated or being within
this state; provided, that if any such person be
married and the property be community prop-
erty, then both husband and wife must join in
such grant." The act contains twelve sections.
After the passage of the act twenty-four trus-
tees were appointed. Among them were judges
of the supreme and superior courts, a L'nited
States senator and business men in various
lines.

Among the lands deeded to the university by
Senator Stanford and his wife were the Palo
Alto estate, containing seventy-two hundred
acres. This ranch had been devoted principally
to the breeding and rearing of thoroughbred
horses. On this the college buildings were to
be erected. The site selected was near the town
of Palo Alto, which is thirty-four miles south
from San Francisco on the railroad to San Jose,
in Santa Clara county.

Another property donated was the Vina
rancho, situated at the junction of Deer creek
with the Sacramento river in Tehama county.
It consisted of fifty-five thousand acres, of
which thirty-six thousand were planted to vines
and orchard and the remainder used for grain
growing and pasture.

The third rancho given to the support of the
university was the Gridley ranch, containing
about twenty-one thousand acres. This was sit-
uated in Butte county and included within its
limits some cf the richest wheat growing lands
in the state. At the time it was donated its as-
sessed value was $1,000,000. The total amount
of land conveyed to the university by deed of
trust was eighty-three thousand two hundred
acres.

The name selected for the institution was Le-
land Stanford Junior University. The corner-
stone of the university was laid May 14. 1887.
by Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford. The site
of the college buildings is about one mile west
from Palo Alto. In his address to the trustees

242

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

November 14, 1885, Senator Stanford said: "We
do not expect to establish a university and fill
it with students at once. It must be the growth
of time and experience. Our idea is that in the
first instance we shall require the establishment
of colleges for both sexes; then of primary
schools, as they may be needed; and out of all
these will grow the great central institution for
more advanced study." The growth of the uni-
versity has been rapid. In a very few years after
its founding it took rank with the best institu-
tions of learning in the United States.

NORMAL SCHOOLS.

/he legislature of 1862 passed a bill author-
izing the establishment of a state normal school
for the training of teachers at San Francisco or
at such other place as the legislature may here-
after direct. The school was established and
conducted for several years at San Francisco,
but was eventually moved to San Jose, where a
site had been donated. A building was erected
and the school became a flourishing institution.
The first building was destroyed by fire and the
present handsome and commodious building
erected on a new site. The first normal school
established in the state was a private one, con-
ducted by George W. Minns. It was started in

San Francisco in 1857, but was discontinued
after the organization of the state school in 1863,
Minns becoming principal. A normal school
was established by the legislature at Los An-
geles in 188 1. It was at first a branch of the
state school at San Jose and was under control
of the same board of trustees and the same prin-
cipal. Later it was made an independent insti-
tution with a board and principal of its own.

Normal schools have been established at
Chico (1889), San Diego (1897) and San Fran-
cisco (1899). The total number of teachers em-
ployed in the five state normal schools in 1900
was one hundred and one, of whom thirty-seven
were men and sixty-four women. The whole
number of students in these at that time was
two thousand and thirty-nine, of whom two hun-
dred and fifty-six were men and one thousand
eight hundred and thirty-nine women.

The total receipts for the support of these
schools from all sources were for the year end-
ing June 30, 1906, $429,416; the total expendi-
tures for the same time were $316,127; the value
of the normal school property of the state is
about $1,017,195. The educational system and
facilities of California, university, college, nor-
mal school and public school, rank with the best
in the United States.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CITIES OF CALIFORNIA— THEIR ORIGIN AND GROWTH.

ftLTHOUGH Spain and Mexico possessed
California for seventy-seven years after
the date of the first settlement made in
it, they founded but few towns and but one of
those founded had attained the dignity of a city
at the time of the American conquest. In a
previous chapter I have given sketches of the
founding of the four presidios and three pueblos
under Spanish rule. Twenty missions were es-
tablished under the rule of Spain and one under
the Mexican Republic. While the country in-
creased in population under the rule of Mex-
ico, the only new settlement that was formed
was the mission at Solano.

Pueblos grew up at the presidios and some of
the mission settlements developed into towns.
The principal towns that have grown up around
the mission sites are San Juan Capistrano, San
Gabriel, San Buenaventura, San Miguel, San
Luis Obispo, Santa Clara and San Rafael.

The creation of towns began after the Ameri-
cans got possession of the country. Before the
treaty of peace between the United States and
Mexico had been made, and while the war was
in progress, two enterprising Americans, Robert
Semple and T. O. Larkin, had created on paper
an extensive city on the Straits of Carquinez.
The city of Francisca "comprises five miles,"

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

248

so the proprietors of the embryo metropolis an-
nounced in the Calif ornian of April 20, 1847,
and in subsequent numbers. According to the
theory of its promoters, F'rancisca had the
choice of sites and must become the metropolis
of the coast. "In front of the city," says their
advertisement, "is a commodious Bay, large
enough for two hundred ships to ride at anchor
safe from any wind. The country around the
city is the best agricultural portion of California
on both sides of the Bay; the straits being only
one mile wide, an easy crossing may always be
made. The entire trade of the great Sacra-
mento and San Joaquin Valleys (a fertile coun-
try of great width and nearly seven hundred
miles long from North to South) must of neces-
sity pass through the narrow channel of Car-
quinez and the Bay, and the country is so situ-
ated that every person who passes from one side
of the Bay to the other will find the nearest and
best way by Francisca."

In addition to its natural advantages the pro-
prietors offered other attractions and induce-
ments to settlers. They advertised that they
would give "seventy-five per cent of the net pro-
ceeds of the ferries and wharves for a school
fund and the embellishment of the city"; "they
have also laid out several entire squares for
school purposes and several others for public
walks" (parks). Yet, notwithstanding all the
superior attractions and natural advantages of
Francisca, people would migrate to and locate
at the wind-swept settlement on the Cove of
Yerba Buena. And the town of the "good
herb" took to itself the name of San Francisco
and perforce compelled the Franciscans to be-
come Benicians. Then came the discovery of
gold and the consequent rush to the mines, and
although Francisca, or Benicia, was on the
route, or one of the routes, somehow San
Francisco managed to get all the profits out of
the trade and travel to the mines.

The rush to the land of gold expanded the
little settlement formed by Richardson and Leese
on the Cove of Yerba Buena into a great city
that in time included within its limits the mis-
sion and the presidio. The consolidation of the
city and county governments gave a simpler

form of municipal rule and gave the city room
to expand without growing outside of its mu-
nicipal jurisdiction. The decennial Federal cen-
sus from 1850 to the close of the century indi-
cates the remarkable growth of San Francisco.
Its population in 1850 was 21,000; in 1860, 56,-
802; in 1870, 149,473; in 1880, 234,000; in 1890,
298,997; in 1900, 342,742.

In Chapter XXVI, page 175 et seq. of this
volume, I have given the early history of San
Francisco, or Yerba Buena, as it was called at
first. I have there given an account of its
growth and progress from the little hamlet on
Yerba Buena cove until it became the metropolis
of the Pacific coast. In that chapter I have told
briefly the story of the "Six Great Fires" that,
between December, 1849, an<J Jutyj 185 1 . devas-
tated the city. These wiped out of existence
every trace of the make-shift and nondescript
houses of the early gold period. After each fire
the burned district was rebuilt with hastily con-
structed houses, better than those destroyed, but
far from being substantial and fire-proof struc-
tures. The losses from these fires, although
great at the time, would be considered trivial
now. In the greatest of these — the fifth — start-
ing on the night of May 3, 1851, and raging for
ten hours, the property loss was estimated to be
between ten and twelve million dollars. There
were many lives lost. Over one thousand houses
were destroyed. The brick blocks and corru-
gated iron houses that by this time had replaced
the flimsy structures of the earlier period in the
business quarter of the city were supposed to be
fire-proof, but the great conflagration of May
3d and 4th, 185 1, disapproved this claim. They
were consumed or melted down by the excessive
heat of that great fire.

It became evident to the business men and
property holders that a better class of buildings
must be constructed, more stringent building
regulations enforced, and a more abundant wa-
ter supply secured. All these in due time were
obtained, and the era of great fires apparently
ended. As it expanded beyond the business
quarter it became a city of wooden walls. But
few dwelling houses were built of brick or stone,
and south of Market street many of the bu~:-

244

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

houses too were built of wood. Ninety per cent,
of all the buildings in the modern city were frame
structures.

After the great fires of the early '50s San Fran-
cisco seemed to have become practically immune
from destructive conflagrations. Other large
cities of its class had suffered from great fires.
Chicago, in 1 871, had been swept out of existence
by a fire that destroyed $170,000,000 of property.
Boston, in 1872, had been forced to give up to the
fire fiend $75,000,000 of its wealth ; and Balti-
more, in 1904, had suffered a property loss of
$50,000,000. San Francisco for more than half a
century had suffered but little loss from fires.
Those that had started were usually confined to
the building or the block in which they originat-
ed. The efficiency of its fire fighters, its fire-
proof business blocks, and the supposed inde-
structibility of the redwood walls of its dwelling
houses had engendered in its inhabitants a sense
of security against destructive fires.

The emblem on the seal of the city and county
of San Francisco — the Phoenix rising from the
flames in front of the Golden Gate — adopted in
1852, after the last of the "Six Great Fires," had
little significance to the inhabitants of the modern
city. The story of the Great Fires was ancient
history. Nil desperandum — motto of the in-
visibles who rebuilt the old city six times —
had no particular meaning to their descendants
except as a reminder of the energy, enterprise
and unconquerable determination of the men of
the olden, golden days. History would nGt re-
peat itself. The day of great fires for San Fran-
cisco was past. This dream of the immunity of
their city from destructive conflagrations was to
receive a rude awakening.

THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AND FIRE.

On the morning of April 18, 1906, at thirteen
minutes past 5 o'clock, its four hundred thousand
inhabitants were aroused from their slumbers by
the terrifying shock of an earthquake. The
temblor was not a new visitor to San Francisco.
Earthquake shocks had shaken it at intervals ever
since its founding, but these had done little dam-
age and had come to be regarded more as a bug-
bear to frighten new arrivals than anything to

be feared. The earthquake of October, 1868, was
the most severe of those in the past. Five lives
were lost in it by falling walls. The walls of
many buildings were cracked. But one of the
most dangerous elements of the last great tem-
blor did not exist then, that is the electric wire.
The live wire has become one of the most dread-
ed agents in great fires.

The impressions produced by the shock and the
sights witnessed during the progress of the fire
are thus graphically described by James Hopper
in "Everybody's Magazine" for June (1906) :
"Right away it was incredible — the violence of
the quake. It started with a directness, a savage
determination that left no doubt of its purpose.
It pounced upon the earth as some sideral bull-
dog, with a rattle of hungry eagerness. The
earth was a rat, shaken in the grinding teeth,
shaken, shaken, shaken with periods of slight
weariness followed by new bursts of vicious rage.
As far as I can remember my impressions were
as follows : First for a few seconds a feeling of
incredulity, capped immediately with one of final-
ity, of incredulity at the violence of the vibra-
tions. 'It's incredible, incredible,' I think I said
aloud. Then the feeling of finality: 'It's the
end — St. Pierre, Samoa, Vesuvius, Formosa, San
Francisco — this is death.' Simultaneously with
that a picture of the city swaying beneath the
curl of a tidal wave foaming to the sky. Then in-
credulity again at the length of it, at the sullen
violence of it. Incredulity again at the mere
length of the thing, the fearful stubbornness of
it. Then curiosity — I must see it.

"I got up and walked to the window. I start-
ed to open it, but the pane obligingly fell out-
ward and I poked my head out, the floor like a
geyser beneath my feet. Then I heard the roar
of the bricks coming down in cataracts and the
groaning of twisted girders all over the city, and
at the same time I saw the moon, a calm crescent
in the green sky of dawn. Below it the skeleton
frame of an unfinished sky-scraper was swaying
from side to side with a swing as exaggerated
and absurd as that of a palm in a stage tempest.

"Just then the quake, with a sound as of a snarl,
rose to its climax of rage, and the back wall of
my building for three stories above me fell. I

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

saw the mass pass across my vision swift as a
shadow. It struck some little wooden houses in
the alley below. I saw them crash in like emptied
egg shells and the bricks pass through the roof
as through tissue paper.

"The vibrations ceased and I began to dress.
Then I noted the great silence. Throughout the
long quaking, in this great house full of people
I had not heard a cry, not a sound, not a sob, not
a whisper. And now, when the roar of crumbling
buildings was over and only a brick falling here
and there like the trickle of a spent rain, this
silence continued, and it was an awful thing.
But now in the alley some one began to groan.
It was a woman's groan, soft and low.

"I went down the stairs and into the streets,
and they were full of people, half-clad, dishev-
elled, but silent, absolutely silent, as if suddenly
they had become speechless idiots. I went into
the little alley at the back of the building, but it
was deserted and the crushed houses seemed
empty. I went down Post street toward the cen-
ter of town, and in the morning's garish light I
saw many men and women with gray faces, but
none spoke. All of them, they had a singular
hurt expression, not one of physical pain, but
rather one of injured sensibilities, as if some
trusted friend, say, had suddenly wronged them,
or as if some one had said something rude to
them " 3is*fc'i;'fc'i-5k*fc'{;'i*'j;

He made his way to the Call building, where
he met the city editor, who said to him : "The
Brunswick hotel at Sixth and Folsom is down
with hundreds inside her. You cover that."

"Going up into the editorial rooms of the Call,
with water to my ankles, I seized a bunch of copy
paper and started up Third street. At Tehama
street I saw the beginning of the fire which was
to sweep all the district south of Market street.
It was swirling up the narrow way with a sound
that was almost a scream. Before it the humble
population of the district were fleeing, and in its
path, as far as I could see, frail shanties went
down like card houses. And this marks the true
character of the city's agony. Especially in the
populous districts south of Market street, but
also throughout the city, hundreds were pinned
down by the debris, some to a merciful death,

others to live hideous minutes. The flames swept
over them while the saved looked on impotently.
Over the tragedy the fire threw its flaming man-
tle of hypocrisy, and the full extent of the holo-
caust will never be known, will remain ever a
poignant mystery."

"The firemen there were beginning the tre-
mendous and hopeless fight which, without inter-
mission, they were to continue for three days.
Without water (the mains had been burst bv the
quake) they were attacking the fire with axes,
with hooks, with sacks, with their hands, re-
treating sullenly before it only when its feverish
breath burned their clothing and their skins."
* *****

He secured an automobile at the hire of $50 a
day to cover the progress of the fire.

"We started first to cover the fire I had seen on
its westward course from Third street. From
that time I have only a vague kaleidoscopic vi-
sion of whirring at whistling speed through a
city of the damned. We tried to make the fallen
Brunswick hotel at Sixth and Folsom streets.
We could not make it. The scarlet steeple chaser
beat us to it, and when we arrived the crushed
structure was only the base of one great flame
that rose to heaven with a single twist. By that
time we knew that the earthquake had been but
a prologue, and that the tragedy was to be writ-
ten in fire. We went westward to get the western
limit of the blaze."

"Already we had to make a huge circle to get
above it. The whole district south of Market
•street was now a pitiful sight. By thousands the
multitudes were pattering along the wide streets
leading out, heads bowed, eyes dead, silent and
stupefied. We stopped in passing at the South-
ern Pacific hospital. Carts, trucks, express
wagons, vehicles of all kinds laden with wounded,
were blocking the gate. Upon the porch stood
two internes, and their white aprons were red-
spotted as those of butchers. There were one
hundred and twenty-five wounded inside and
eight dead. Among the wounded was Chief Sul-
livan of the fire department. A chimney of the
California hotel had crushed through his hous^r
at the first shock of the earthquake, and he and
his wife had been taken out of the debris with

240

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

incredible difficulty. He was to die two days
later, spared the bitter, hopeless effort which his

men were to know."

*****

"At Thirteenth and Valencia streets a policeman
and a crowd of volunteers were trying to raise
the debris of a house where a man and woman
were pinned. One block farther we came to a
place where the ground had sunk six feet. A
fissure ran along Fourteenth street for several
blocks and the car tracks had been jammed along
their length till they rose in angular projections
three or four feet high. As we were examining
the phenomenon in a narrow way called Treat
avenue a quake occurred. It came upon the far-
end of endurance of the poor folk crowding the
alley. Women sank to their knees, drew their
shawls about their little ones, and broke out in
piercing lamentations, while men ran up and
down aimlessly, wringing their hands. An old
woman led by a crippled old man came wailing
down the steps of a porch, and she was blind. In
the center of the street they both fell and all the
poor encouragement we could give them could
not raise them. They had made up their minds
to die."

S|c sj;

"On Valencia street, between Eighteenth and
Nineteenth, the Valencia hotel, a four-story
wooden lodging-house was down, its four stories
telescoped to the height of one, its upper rooms
ripped open with the cross section effect of a
doll-house. A squad of policemen and some fifty
volunteers were working with rageful energy at
the tangle of walls and rafters. Eleven men were
known to have escaped, eight had been taken out
dead, and more than one hundred were still in
the ruins. The street here was sunk six feet, and
again, as I was to see it many times more, I saw
that strange, angular rise of the tracks as if the
ground had been pinched between some gigantic
fingers."

"We went down toward the fire now. We
met it on Eighth street. From Third it had
come along in a swath four blocks wide. From
Market to Folsom, from Second to Eighth, it
spread its heaving red sea, and with a roar it was
rushing on, its advance billow curling like a

monster comber above a flotsam of fleeing hu-
manity. There were men, women and children.
Men, women and children — really that is about
all I remember of them, except that they were
miserable and crushed. Here and there are still
little snap-shots in my mind — a woman carrying
in a cage a green and red parrot, squawking
incessantly 'Hurry, hurry, hurry;' a little
smudge-faced girl with long-lashed brown eyes
holding in her arms a blind puppy; a man with
naked torso carrying upon his head a hideous
chromo ; another with a mattress and a cracked
mirror. But by this time the cataclysm itself, its
manifestation, its ferocious splendor, hypnotized
the brain, and humans sank into insignificance as
ants caught in the slide of a mountain. One more
scene I remember. On Eighth street, between
Folsom and Howard, was an empty sand lot
right in the path of the conflagration. It was
full of refugees, and what struck me was their
immobility. They sat there upon trunks, upon
bundles of clothing. On each side, like the claws
of a crab, the fire was closing in upon them. They
sat there motionless, as if cast in bronze, as if
indeed they were wrought upon some frieze rep-
resenting the Misery of Humanity. The fire
roared, burning coals showered them, the heat
rose, their clothes smoked, and they still sat there,
upon their little boxes, their bundles of rags, their
goods, the pathetic little hoard which they had
been able to treasure in their arid lives, a fixed
determination in their staring eyes not to leave
again, not to move another step, to die there and
then, with the treasures for the saving of which
their bodies had no further strength."

The vibrations of the first earthquake shock
had scarcely ceased before the fire broke out in a
number of different localities. The first alarm
came from Clay and Drumm streets on the city
front. Others followed in rapid succession until
by the afternoon of the first day the fire had al-
most entirely circled the lower section of the city.
The firemen made a brave fight at various points
to stay its progress, but the water mains had been
broken and their engines were useless. Then the
only hope to arrest the march of the fire fiend was
dynamite. The steady boom, boom of that ex-
plosive as hour after hour passed and house after

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

247

house was blown up told of the losing fight that
was being waged against the destroying element.

The wooden houses south of lower Market
street, one of the sections first attacked by the fire
fiend, were quickly destroyed and the fire swept
on to the westward. By Wednesday night it had
swept up to and leaped across Market street. The
tall buildings of the Call, Chronicle and Examiner
at Third and Market streets succumbed and the
great business blocks of the neighborhood were
gutted by the flames, only their outer shells re-
mained. By Thursday morning the flames had
swept over Sansome and Montgomery to Kear-
ney and in places beyond.

Jack London, in "Collier's" of May 5th, gives
the following dramatic description of the scenes
in the heart of the business section :

"At nine o'clock Wednesday evening I walked
down through the very heart of the city. I
walked through miles and miles of magnificent
buildings and towering skyscrapers. Here was
no fire. All was in perfect order. The police
patrolled the streets. Every building had its
watchman at the door. And yet it was doomed,
all of it. There was no water. The dynamite
was giving out. And at right angles two differ-
ent conflagrations were sweeping down upon it.

"At one o'clock in the morning I walked down
through the same section. Everything still stood
intact. There was no fire. And yet there was a
change. A rain of ashes was falling. The
watchmen at the doors were gone. The police
had been withdrawn. There were no firemen, no
fire-engines, no men fighting with dynamite.
The district had been absolutely abandoned. I
stood at the corner of Kearney and Market, in
the very heart of San Francisco. Kearney street
was deserted. Half a dozen blocks away it was
burning on both sides. The street was a wall of
flame. And against this wall of flame, silhouetted
sharply, were two United States cavalrymen sit-
ting their horses, calmly watching. That was
all. Not another person was in sight. In the
intact heart of the city two troopers sat their
horses and watched.

"Surrender was complete. There was no wa-
ter. The sewers had long since been pumped
dry. There was no dynamite. Another fire had

broken out further up-town, and now from three
sides conflagrations were sweeping down. The
fourth side had been burned earlier in the day.
In that direction stood the tottering walls of the
Examiner building, the burned-out Call building,
the smouldering ruins of the Grand hotel, and the
gutted, devastated, dynamited Palace hotel. The
following will illustrate the sweep of the flames
and the inability of men to calculate their speed.
At eight o'clock Wednesday evening I passed
through Union Square. It was packed with
refugees. Thousands of them had gone to bed
on the grass. Government tents had been set up,
supper was being cooked, and the refugees were
lining up for free meals.

"At half-past one in the morning three sides of
Union Square were in flames. The fourth side,
where stood the great St. Francis hotel, was still
holding out. An hour later, ignited from top and
sides, the St. Francis was flaming heavenward.
Union Square, heaped high with mountains of
trunks, was deserted. Troops, refugees, and all
had deserted.

"Remarkable as it may seem, Wednesday
night, while the whole city crashed and roared
into ruin, was a quiet night. There were no
crowds. There was no shouting and yelling.
There was no hysteria, no disorder. I passed
Wednesday night in the path of the advancing
flames, and in all those terrible hours I saw not
one woman who wept, not one man who was ex-
cited, not one person who was in the slightest
degree panic-stricken.

"Before the flames, throughout the night, fled
tens of thousands of homeless ones. Some were
wrapped in blankets. Others carried bundles of
bedding and dear household treasures. Some-
times a whole family was harnessed to a carriage
or delivery wagon that was weighted down with
their possessions. Baby buggies, toy wagons
and go-carts were used as trucks, while every
other person was dragging a trunk. Yet every-
body was gracious. The most perfect courtesy
obtained. Never, in all San Francisco's history,
were her people so kind and courteous as on this

night of terror."

*****

"All night these tens of thousands fled before

248

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the flames. Many of them, the poor people from
the labor ghetto, had fled all day as well. They
had left their homes burdened with possessions.
Now and again they lightened up, flinging out
upon the street clothing and treasures they had
dragged for miles.

"They held on longest to their trunks, and over
these trunks many a strong man broke his heart
that night. The hills of San Francisco are steep,
and up these hills, mile after mile, were the trunks
dragged. Everywhere were trunks, with across
them lying their exhausted owners, men and wo-
men. Before the march of the flames were flung
picket lines of soldiers. And a block at a time, as
the flames advanced, these pickets retreated. One
of their tasks was to keep the trunk-pullers mov-
ing. The exhausted creatures, stirred on by the
menace of bayonets, would arise and struggle up
the steep pavements, pausing from weakness
every five or ten feet.

"Often, after surmounting a heart-breaking
hill, they would find another wall of flame advanc-
ing upon them at right angles and be compelled
to change anew the line of their retreat. In
the end, completely played out, after toiling for
a dozen hours like giants, thousands of them were
compelled to abandon their trunks.

"It was in Union Square that I saw a man of-
fering $1,000 for a team of horses. He was in
charge of a truck piled high with trunks from
some hotel. It had been hauled here into what
was considered safety, and the horses had been
taken out. The flames were on three sides of the
Square, and there were no horses."

"Aii hour later, from a distance, I saw the
truck-load of trunks burning merrily in the mid-
dle of the street."

All day Thursday the fight was waged, the
flames steadily advancing to the westward. It
was determined to make the last stand on Van
Ness avenue, the widest street in the city. It was
solidly lined with magnificent dwellings, the resi-
dences of many of the wealthy inhabitants. Here
the fire fighters rallied. Here all the remaining
resources for fighting the destroying element
were collected, dynamite, barrels of powder from

the government stores and a battery of marine
guns. The mansions lining the avenue for near-
ly a mile in length were raked with artillery or
blown up with dynamite and powder. Here and
there the flames leaped across the line of defense
and ignited buildings beyond. Two small
streams of water were secured from unbroken
pipes and the fires that broke out beyond the line
of defense were beaten out, principally by the use
of wet blankets and rugs. By midnight of the
19th the fire was under control, and by Friday
morning the flames were conquered. A change
of wind during the night had aided the fire fight-
ers to check its westward march. As the wind
drove it back, it swept around the base of Tele-
graph Hill and destroyed all the poor tenement
houses near the base of that hill that it had spared
on its first advance, except a little oasis on the
upper slope that had been saved by a liberal use
of Italian wine. In the great fire of May 4, 1851,
De Witt & Harrison saved their warehouse,
which stood on the west side of Sansome street
between Pacific and Broadway, scarce a stone's
throw from Telegraph Hill, by knocking in the
heads of barrels of vinegar and covering the
building with blankets soaked in that liquid in
place of water, which could not be obtained.
Eighty thousand gallons were used, but the on-
ward march of the flames in that direction was
stopped. How many gallons of wine were sac-
rificed will never be known.

The earthquake shock had scarcely ceased be-
fore General Funston, in command of the mil-
itary forces at the Presidio, called out the troops
and sent them down into the stricken city, to aid
in keeping order and fighting the fire. Mayor
Schmitz issued a proclamation placing the city
under martial law. Across the streets were
thrown cordons of soldiers, who forced the dazed
and half-crazed crowd to keep away from the
danger of the advancing fire and falling walls.
In addition to their other duties the military had
to undertake the repression of crime. Even amid
the scenes of suffering, desolation and death,
thieves looted stores and robbed the dead bodies,
and ghouls, half-drunk with liquor, committed
deeds of unspeakable horror. These when
caught received short shrift. They were shot

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

-'49

down without trial. Several regiments of the
National Guard, from different parts of the state,
were called out and they did efficient service in
San Francisco, Oakland and Alameda. The Pre-
sidio, Golden Gate Park and other parks were
converted into refugee camps and rations issued.
Military organization was prompt and effective.
Four days after the fire there were military
butchers, blacksmiths, carpenters, chimney inspec-
tors and sanitary inspectors. Strict military reg-
ulations were enforced in the various camps and
a constant watch was kept up to prevent the
breaking out of epidemic diseases. Train loads
of provisions and clothing were hurried from all
parts of the state and beyond for the immediate
relief of the sufferers. Contributions of money
flowed in from all over the country, until the to-
tal ran up into the millions. The railroads fur-
nished free transportation to all who had friends
in other cities of the state. The Red Cross Re-
lief Society, at the head of which is James D.
Phelan, ex-mayor of San Francisco, had taken
up the burden of caring for the destitute until
they could take care of themselves.

The actual number of lives lost by the earth-
quake will never be known ; many who were
pinned down in the wrecked buildings would
have escaped with slight injuries had not the fire
followed so quickly after the earthquake shock.
The total number of deaths officially reported
up to the last of May was three hundred and
thirty-three. The property loss ranges from two
hundred to two hundred and fifty millions of dol-
lars. Insurance covered about one hundred and
twenty millions ; whether all of this will be paid
is yet to be decided.

, The fire devastated two hundred and sixty-nine
blocks, covering an area of nearly three thousand
acres, or about five square miles. In this vast
fire-swept desert there were three little oases
that the destroyer had left unscathed. In the
very heart of this desert stood the mint with its
accumulated treasure unharmed by fire or earth-
quake shock. Thirty-five years ago, when Gen.
O. H. La Grange was superintendent of the mint,
he had sunk an artesian well within the inclosure.
He received neither thanks nor encouragement
from the government for his work. When the

fire surged around it the employes and ten sol-
diers were housed within it ; for seven hours they
fought against the onslaught of flames that
dashed against the building. The courageous
fighters, aided by the thick walls and the water
supply from the artesian well, won the victory
and the building with its treasure was saved.
Throughout the days and nights that the fire
raged the tall tower of the Ferry building loomed
up through the smoke of the burning city, the
hands of the silent clock mutely pointing to 13
minutes past 5, the moment the temblor began
its work.

The post office, with but nominal damages,
survived the wreck and ruin of the city. The
palatial homes of the bonanza kings and rail-
road magnates, built on Knob Hill thirty years
ago, were wiped out of existence. Of Mark-
Hopkins Art Institute with its treasures of art
only a chimney is left. Of the Stanford house,
the Crocker mansion, the Huntington palace and
the Flood residence only broken pillars, ruined
arches, heaps of bricks, shattered glass and piles
of ashes tell how complete a leveler of distinction
fire is. Chinatown, the plague spot of San Fran-
cisco and the old time bete nolr of Denis Kearney
and his followers, has been obliterated from the
map of the city. Not a vestige is left to mark
where it was, but is not. Kearney's slogan, "The
Chinese must go," is again reiterated; and it is
questionable whether the almond-eyed followers
of Confucius will be allowed to relocate in their
former haunts.

OAKLAND, ALAMEDA AND BERKELEY.

The cities across the bay from San Francisco,
Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley, escaped with
but slight damage. A number of buildings were
wrecked and chimneys thrown down, but the fire
did not follow the shock and the aggregated loss
of property in all three did not exceed $2,000,000.
There were five lives lost in Oakland. These
cities became great camps of refuge for the
homeless of San Francisco. The hospitality of
their people was taxed to the utmost to take care
of the San Francisco sufferers, who fled from
their stricken city as soon as the means of exit
were available.

250

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY.

With a strange partiality the temblor spared
the buildings of the State University at Berkeley.
Located only a dozen miles from San Francisco,
scarcely a brick was displaced from a chimney,
but it wrought ruin to many of the noble build-
ings of Stanford University, thirty-four miles dis-
tant from the metropolis. The Memorial
Church, the unfinished library, the new gymna-
sium, part of the art museum, the Stanford resi-
dence at Palo Alto and the memorial arch were
badly wrecked. Some of them were hopelessly
ruined. Encina hall (the men's dormitory) was
injured by the fall of stone chimneys and one
student was killed. The loss in all amounted to
$3,000,000.

SAN JOSE.

The city of San Jose seemed to be in the line
of. march chosen by the temblor. The business
center was wrecked, its court house destroyed
and many of its dwellings badly damaged. For-
tunately it escaped a visitation by fire. Nineteen
lives were lost and the property loss exceeded
$2,000,000.

SANTA ROSA.

The city of Santa Rosa, the capital of Sonoma
county, in proportion to its wealth and the num-
ber of its inhabitants, suffered more severely than
any other city in California. The business por-
tion of the city, which was closely grouped
around the Court House Square, was entirely de-
stroyed. As there were no suburban stores the
supply of provisions was cut off. The breaking
off of communication left the outside world ig-
norant of Santa Rosa's fate. For a time she was
left entirely to her own resources to aid her suf-
ferers. As in San Francisco, fire followed the
temblor, which increased greatly the loss of life
and property. The water mains were not brok-
en and within three hours the fire was practically
under control.

Among the buildings destroyed by earthquake
and fire were the court house, the new Masonic
temple, the public library, six hotels, a five-story
brewery, a shoe factory, a four-story flour mill,
two theaters, the Odd Fellows hall, and a num-

ber of office buildings, flats and apartment
houses. The number of dead reported was fifty-
six. The injured and missing numbered eighty-
seven.

The business houses in San Mateo, Belmont,
Palo Alto and Redwood City were nearly all
wrecked. Many of the stately mansions and rose-
embowered cottages that line the road between
San Francisco and San Jose on the western side
of the bay were thrown from their foundations
and chimneys falling on the roofs had cut their
way to the ground.

On the eastern side the towns of San Leandro
and Haywards that were badly damaged in the
earthquake of 1868 escaped this last temblor
unharmed. Santa Clara, Gilroy and Salinas suf-
fered in about the same proportion as San Jose.

At Monterey the Del Monte hotel was injured
by the falling of the chimneys through the roof.
Two persons, a bridal couple from Arizona, were
killed by the falling of a chimney.

Hollister, Napa and Santa Cruz suffered con-
siderable damage. The greatest loss of life at
any public institution occurred at the Agnews In-
sane Asylum. It contained ten hundred and
eighty-eight patients, besides physicians, nurses
and attendants ; of these, as nearly as can be as-
certained, one hundred and ten inmates and em-
ployes were killed. The buildings were entirely
destroyed. The inmates who escaped injury
were housed in tents and guards stationed around
the inclosure to keep them from running away.
Temporary buildings were at once constructed.
There was no loss of life or property south of
Monterey. The shock throughout the southern
part of the state was very slight.

LOS ANGELES.

The only settlement under Mexican domina-
tion that attained the dignity of a ciudad, or city,
was Los Angeles. Although proclaimed a city
by the Mexican Congress more than ten years
before the Americans took possession of the coun-
try, except in official documents it was usually
spoken of as el pueblo — the town. Its popula-
tion at the time of its conquest by the Americans
numbered about sixteen hundred. The first leg-
islature gave it a city charter, although fifteen

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

251

years before it had been raised to the dignity of
a citv ; the lawmakers for some reason cut down
its area from four square leagues to four square
miles. This did not affect its right to its pueblo
lands. After the appointment of a land commis-
sion, in 185 1, it laid claim to sixteen square
leagues, but failed to substantiate its claim. Its
pueblo area of four square leagues (Spanish) was
confirmed to it by the commission. Within the
past seven years, by annexation, its area has been
increased from the original four square leagues
or about twenty-seven miles, to thirty-seven
square miles. Its increase in population during
the past twenty years has been the greatest of any
of the large cities of the state. In 1880 it had
11,183 inhabitants; in 1890, 50,353; in 1900,
102,429. Its growth since 1900 has exceeded that
of any similar period in its history. Its estimated
population January, 1908, is 300,000.

Many influences have contributed to the growth
and advancement of the city, not the least of
which has been the excellent transportation ser-
vice developed in the Pacific Electric System. The
first attempt to introduce the trolley car in Los
Angeles was a failure, and the promoter, How-
land, died in poverty. Later, other ventures to
provide suitable transportation were made,
though none was successfully launched until
1892, when the Los Angeles Electric Railroad
system was inaugurated. The first line con-
structed was that on West Second, Olive, First
and other streets to Westlake Park. The prop-
erty owners on the line of the road gave a sub-
sidy of $50,000 to the promoters. When H. E.
Huntington bought the controlling interest in
the Los Angeles Electric Railway the building of
a system of suburban and interurban railways to
the different cities and towns contiguous to Los
Angeles was begun. The road to Long Beach
was completed in 1902, to Monrovia in 1903, and
to Whittier the same year. The seven-story Hunt-
ington building, at the corner of Sixth and Main
streets, the entrepot of all Huntington interur-
ban lines, was completed in 1903. These im-
provements, together with the extension of new
street car lines in the city, stimulated the real
estate market and brought about a rapid advance
in values. Lots on South Main street, held at

$100 per front foot in 1900, sold five years later
at $1,500, and frontage on South Hill street
valued at $200 a front foot in 1901, sold in 1906
at $2,500. Real estate contiguous to the busi-
ness district, but still residence property, had ad-
vanced in value in five years from one thousand
to twelve hundred per cent.

OAKLAND.

The site of the city of Oakland was discovered
by the Spaniards in 1772, when a brave band of
explorers set out to find the lost bay of San
Francisco. The first spot settled in Alameda
county by white men was the Mission San Jose,
founded June 11, 1707. by Father Fernin Fran-
cisco de Lasuen, president of the Franciscan mis-
sionaries, and dedicated June 27. The first two
ranchos granted in what is now Alameda county
were San Antonio (upon which Oakland and
other towns now stand, granted June 20, 1820,
to Luis Maria Peralta by Col. Pablo Vicente de
Sola, the last Spanish governor) and Los
Tularcitos ; the latter now embraces part of
Alameda and Santa Clara counties ; it was granted
to Jose Higuera October 4, 1821, by Capt. Luis
Antonio Arguello, the first Mexican governor.—

Luis Maria Peralta had four sons, to whom he
gave in as equal parts as possible the rancho San
Antonio. It remained intact until 1842, when
he parcelled it to them, fixing the boundaries by
natural landmarks, each part extending from the
bay to the hills. To Jose Domingo he ga\c the
northwest quarter, new the site of Berkclcv ; the
next part adjoining, including the Encinal del
Temescal, then an oak grove, and now the Oak-
land citv site, was given to Vicente ; to Antonio
Maria, the next adjoining on the south, the pres-
ent site of East Oakland and Alameda : and to
Ignacio the most southerly, bounded by San
Leandro creek.

The first foreign born that appeared on the
list of grantees was William Welch, his grant.
Las Juntas, fronting the straits of Carquincz.
and upon it the citv of Martinez, the first county
town, is built. Joseph Livermore, an English
seaman, who followed in 1820. married Josefa
Higuera. thereby acquiring Mexican citizenship.
He obtained possession of Canada de Los

252

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Vaqueros, and with Jose Noriega acquired the
rancho Los Pocitas. Both of these now form
part of Livermore valley.

A company of Mormons who had come to
San Francisco with Samuel Brannan in July,
1846, on the bark Brooklyn, crossed the bay
and settled at Washington, where they built their
first church. At that time there were no settle-
ments outside the ranchos except the mission.
Upon the discovery of gold in 1848, the mission
became an important trading post, and Henry
C. Smith opened a general store. At the first
constitutional convention, called by Governor
Riley in J 849 to form the state, the present
county of Alameda, then in the San Jose district,
was represented by Elam Brown. W. R. Bas-
sam was the first state senator, and Joseph Aram,
Benjamin Corey and Elam Brown, the first as-
semblymen. By an act of the legislature March
23, 1850, Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties
formed the fifth senatorial district, and jointly
chose one senator. In 1852, Warren Brown, the
county surveyor, mentioned three towns, Mar-
tinez, Oakland and Squatterville, now San
Lorenzo.

Moses Chase, the first white settler in what
now is East Oakland, pitched his tent on the
east shore of the estuary in 1850. The same year
he was joined by the three Patten brothers,
Robert F., William and Edward. They jointly
became owners of four hundred acres of land
deeded by C. B. Strode, and at once laid out in
lots and founded the town of Clinton. In 185 1
Edson Adams, A. J. Moon and H. W. Carpentier
squatted on the .San Antonio ranch at the foot
of what is now Broadway, disregarding entirelv
all the rights of Peralta. Assuming it to be
government land, they divided it among them-
selves. They were followed by others and the
rightful owner found he was losing his land as
well as his cattle and timber. Vicente Peralta
then obtained a writ of ejectment against Adams,
AToon and Carpentier. the officers coming from
Martinez, the county seat, to enforce the order,
when a compromise was effected, the land being
leased to the three men. They assumed owner-
ship, and platted the town of Oakland. Carpen-
tier obtained the office of enrolling clerk in the

state senate and while in this position advanced
the scheme of incorporating Oakland, which in
1852 had only about one hundred inhabitants.
The early conditions in Alameda county were in
great contrast to the present. In 1851 and 1852,
men were working in the redwoods of San An-
tonio. There were only a few native ranch-
erios and their retainers between San Antonio
and Mission San Jose. J. J. Estudillo was the
only resident of the present site of San Leandro;
San Lorenzo was an Indian rancheria ; the whole
site of Hayward was owned by Guillermo Costa ;
Jose Amador had the rancho San Ramon ; New
Haven, with no buildings, was the landing place
for Mission San Jose ; Centerville had a few
white settlers who had located in 1850, among
them John M. Horner. Henry C. Smith, the
merchant at the mission, was alcalde under Gov-
ernor Riley. Antonio Sunol (see biography)
occupied the entire valley bearing his name. Au-
gustine Bernal settled at what is now Pleasanton
and in 1850, with Livermore, Noriega, Alviso
and Amador, owned nearly one-half the country.
Wild Mexican cattle roamed the prairie and
hills by thousands ; wild animals and wild game
were abundant; the wild mustard grew luxuriant-
ly, and the hills were covered with wild oats.

x\lameda county was made separate by an act
of the legislature passed March 25, 1853, the
name being derived from the creek that runs
through it near Niles, the banks of which were
lined with trees, and covered with an abundance
of grass, forming a contrast to the waste land
on either side. It was called by the Spaniards
el lugar de la Alameda, the name being derived
from the resemblance of the shaded stream to
a long avenue. It was applied by the Spaniards
in 1796, when the first official reference to the
name was found in the Mexican records. Gov-
ernor Diego Borica was desirous of establishing
a town in central California, to be independent
of the missions, and to be called Branciforte.
For the selection of a site he sent Don Pedro
de Alberni, who traversed the country from
Santa Cruz to the stream, which he named "the
place of the Alameda."

The seat of justice was Alvarado, though the
legislature in the same act created New Haven

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

as the county seat, which in 1856 was trans-
ferred to San Leandro, and there remained until
April 29, 1873, being then transferred to Oak-
land. That city placed the unoccupied part of
the city hall at the disposal of the board of super-
visors, until buildings could be erected. How-
ever, on June 17, it was decided to locate the
seat of justice in Brooklyn, then called East
Oakland, and on June 26 all records were trans-
ferred and San Leandro began its decline. The
first court was held in Oakland July 7, 1873.
By an act of the legislature the county seat was
established on Broadway, where it still exists.

In 1853 the population had increased to eight
thousand. This same year Tamon & Clark made
their embarcadero in Brooklyn township. Chip-
man and Aughenbaugh laid out the town of
Encinal in 1852. During 1853 Moses Wicks, T.
W. Mulford, Minor, and William Smith settled
on the bay borders near San Leandro. At New
Haven, Capt. John Chisholm and William Rob-
erts established landings, built warehouses, and
began a freighting business. They also took up
land, and sailed sloops between New Haven
(San Lorenzo) and San Francisco. In 1862
several persons settled at Hay ward; William
Hayward pitched his tent on the present site of
the town. The same year A. M. Church (see
biography) opened a store at New Haven. The
number of settlers was rapidly increasing in all
directions. They laid their foundations firmly
but the tenure of their holdings were the only
drawbacks, and these were not settled without
long litigation. The first election of officers un-
der the law of April 6, 1853. was held in May.
The county was divided into six townships, Oak-
land, Contra Costa, Clinton, Eden, Washington
and Murray. The boundaries of Oakland and
Clinton were changed by petition, and the latter
done away with. September 14, 1854, Alameda
township was constituted, and changes made in
the boundaries of Eden and Washington. The
last meeting of the court of sessions was held
January 22, 1855 ; and the following April the
board of supervisors was created, consisting of
one official from each township. In 1852 the first
trustees of Oakland were A. W. Burrill. A. J.
Moon, Amadee Marier and Edson Adams.

The town then owned ten thousand acres of
overflowed lands, known as the waterfront. All
of the lands lying between high tide and the
ship channel had been granted and released to
the town on condition of their being used for
wharves and like purposes. The board of trus-
tees was authorized to dispose of the entire front-
age, and their first act was to sell and convey
on May 31 to H. W. Carpentier the right, title
and interest in and to the waterfront, with tiie
privilege of collecting wharfage. The considera-
tion named was $5, with the proviso that Car-
pentier and his representatives build a wharf at
the foot of Main street, now Broadway, at ieasl
twenty feet wide, and extending toward deep
water; and within one year, construct a wharf
at the foot of F or G street, extending also
into the channel ; and that within eighteen months
another wharf should be constructed at the foot
of D or F street ; and that two per cent of all
wharfage receipts should be paid to the town of
Oakland. Marier, then president of the- board,
refused to sign the deed of transfer, until being
assured by Carpentier that he would merely hold
the land in trust for the town in order that a
succeeding board could not dispose of it. The
facts were that the town had no right to a
single acre of the land at that time; other parties
were endeavoring to purchase from Peralta. the
owner, and this transfer Carpentier wished to
thwart. He promised Marier to deed back to
the town as soon as all danger had passed ; i f he
made such a promise, he never fulfilled it. The
parties who had been negotiating for the prop-
erty were, on March 3, 1852, given a deed by
Peralta and his wife for a consideration of $10.-
000. August 15, 1853. a deed of partition was
executed, assigning to each party his portion, and
making an equal division of the town propertv.
Carpentier erected his wharf and a dock for tin-
purpose of collecting wharfage. In 1853 the rob-
berv of the town lands hecame known, and <uits
and countersuits ensued. The ordinance trans-
ferrins: the lands to Carpentier was confirmed b\
the legislature in 1862.

Tn 1867 the Western Pacific Railroad needed
a terminus for their line in Oakland, but the
town had no waterfront land to offer. At this

254

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

time the town began suit to recover title. A com-
promise was effected, and by a special legislative
act, the city was enabled to carry into effect the
agreement. In 1880 suit was again begun to
grant title to five hundred acres that had been
deeded to the railroad company. Then the
government needed a body of land on the chan-
nel extending to Oakland creek, which the rail-
road company transferred for the purpose, while
the above suit was pending. In 1853 and 1854
Carpentier disposed of his interests for $62,850.
August 16, 1855, John B. Watson sold the entire
waterfront for $6,000. There is no official rec-
ord of how this property had come into his
possession. December 15, 1853, a twenty year
lease was made in Oakland by Carpentier to Ed-
son Adams and A. J. Moon, for a two-third in-
terest in a beach and water lot. for $2,000.
Adams claimed one-half of the entire property
and obtained it by forcible means. This he later
sold for a large sum to the Central Pacific Rail-
road. At one time Carpentier, in a message to
the city council, stated that the owners and hold-
ers of the waterfront and franchises had expend-
ed $100,000 on its improvement, and would not
submit to any interference, but would demand
and recover from the city full compensation for
any losses they might sustain ; and if the city
fancied she had any cause for complaint, she
should resort to the courts.

After the coming of the Southern Pacific
Company, the Oakland Waterfront Company
came into existence. It was organized by officers
and representatives of the railroad, associated
with private owners ; and obtained possession of
large portions of the waterfront. This com-
plicated matters, and began a new series of suits,
brought by the city against the Southern Pacific
and the Oakland Waterfront Company, which
kept the municipality in litigation until 1907. In
that year the Western Pacific Company, to com-
plete its transcontinental line, applied for water-
front lands. The interests of the city of Oak-
land were represented by Mayor Frank K. Mott,
Citv Attorney J. E. McElroy, City Engineer F.
C. Turner, ex-officio harbor commissioners, and
William R. Davis, for many years special coun-
sel for the citv in waterfront litigation. On the

advice of Davis and McElroy, the city council
assumed that the first transfers of the water-
front to private persons were illegal ; and that
subsequent legislation by the state, together with
the right of eminent domain, made Oakland the
controlling power of the waterfront. The city
council granted the Western Pacific Company a
franchise to valuable lands on the western water-
front. The Southern Pacific opposed this, but
was forestalled by the case brought forward by
the Western Pacific attorneys, which led to the
return to the city of unquestioned control of
the waterfront. This litigation between the two
companies resulted in a decision in 1907 by the
United States Circuit Court, which declared Oak-
land to have control of the wharfing-out rights.
The harbor commissioners summoned all persons
and corporations occupying lands between the
high and low tide lines to a conference on July 8,
1908, at which the city officials asserted the city
of Oakland to be the legal owner of all lands
over which the rising tide flowed in 1852.
About the same time, through Councilman B.
H. Pendleton, the Western Pacific agreed to an
amendment of their franchise, by which during
the fifty years of its tenure they were to pay the
city a rental for the water frontage, totalling
$50,000. This was the first recognition by an
occupant of the property of the citv's control of
wharfing-out rights. The municipal ownership
of tide lands was virtually established Septem-
ber 28, 1908, when the harbor commissioners
made public an agreement voluntarily entered in-
to by the railway companies, to end all litigation,
and to have finally established the low-tide line
of 1852. This was important on account of
the decision of the United States Circuit Court,
which returned to municipal control the area out-
ward from the low-tide line of 1852 to the ship
channel. The Southern Pacific Company agreed
that the terms of their franchise, originally made
perpetual, be limited to a life of fifty years, and
also agreed to abandon and remove the Long
Wharf, thus giving free access to the waterfront
between the Southern Pacific broad gauge mole
and the Key Route pier. The city agreed to
grant the Southern Pacific land and water rights
contiguous to their broad gauge rhole for the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

255

building of a new freight wharf, on the basis
of a fifty year franchise. The last and most
vital clause of the agreement was a stipulation
of the Southern Pacific that the decision of the
United States Circuit Court in 1907 should not
be contested. Broadway wharf was returned to
the city.

August 1, 1853, Vicente Peralta disposed of
all but seven hundred acres of the Temescal for
$100,000, and about the same time Jose Domingo
Peralta sold all but three hundred acres of the
San Antonio rancho for the sum of $82,000.

The first official survey of Oakland in 1853 es-
tablished the boundaries at Fourteenth street on
the north, Oakland creek on the south, the slough
which now is Lake Merritt on the east, and on
the west a line three hundred feet west of West
street. The enclosed area was divided into blocks
200x300 feet in dimension, with streets eighty feet
in width with the exception of the main street,
one hundred and ten feet wide. Six blocks were
' reserved for parks. Oakland was incorporated
March 25, 1854. H. W. Carpentier was the first
mayor. The town had a newspaper, the Alameda
Express. The fire department was organized
with Col. John Scott of New York as the first
chief. Other public institutions were established
at the same time. From 1854 for the next ten
years, Oakland had a very slow growth ; the un-
certainty of titles and increasing litigation re-
tarded her progress. School advantages were
inferior ; streets were poorly kept ; and there were
only two or three churches. In 1853 Charles
Minturn, associated with Carpentier, Moon and
Adams, built the first steamboat in the estuary.

In 1868 the opening of the creek, the establish-
ment of an opposition line of steamers, the con-
struction of the Oakland street railwav, and the
prospects of a terminus of a transcontinental
railroad, caused a change for the better, and
gave business an upward turn ; and a better class
of residences were built. January, 1855, Oak-
land had a case of lynch law. George W. Shel-
don, accused of horse stealing, was taken from
the authorities by a mob and hanged to an oak
tree in Clinton. Such occurrences were rare, the
inhabitants generally beins: law abiding and
peaceable. Oakland was the only place in the

county that had a jail. At the county seat, the
sheriff often was obliged to stand guard over
his prisoners, or lock them in a room in the
Brooklyn hotel. One of the first acts of the
supervisors was to provide for the preserva-
tion of the wooded sections of the county. In
1876 the corporate limits of Oakland comprised
four and one-half miles of territory north and
south, and three and one-half east and west,
nearly 20,000 square acres, one-half in marsh
lands, Lake Merritt, and the San Antonio
estuary. Independence square. East Oakland, is
one hundred and seventeen feet above tide water,
while at Twelfth street and Broadway, it is
thirty-eight feet.

Since 1880 the city has been extended toward
the foothills, and laid out with regularity. The
streets have been effectively paved, and constant
attention given them. Large amounts of money
have been expended for sidewalks, sewers have
been kept in serviceable condition, and park-,
beautified. Lake Merritt has always been tin-
pride of the citizens of Oakland. In 1874 a
change of name was suggested, but the council
protested strongly.

In 1870 the Berkeley & Oakland Water
Company became incorporated with a capital
of $100,000 to supply fresh water to Oak-
land and other towns in the county. In
1891 the Contra Costa Water Company en-
tered into a contract, agreeing to pay
$47,500 for a system of filters and other req-
uisite machinerv, locating their plant near Lake
Chabot. The Contra Costa Company gradually ab-
sorbed all rivals, and as a result of the monopoly
a series of suits over the fixing of the rates were
brought against the city by the corporation. Tin-
last of these, brought in 1808. was handed down
to the People's Water Company, which purchased
the Contra Costa Company in i9c/>. Litigation
was disposed of in 1908 by an agreement with
the city council, taking effect that year, which
permanently fixed the water rates. The first
lighting company was organized in iSnVS, and
from that has grown an elaborate system, the
citv now being lighted with both gas and elec-
tricity.

In 1853 little attention was paid to the moral

256

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and religious welfare of the citizens ; there were
three or four Protestant organizations. The first
clergyman was Rev. W. W. Brier. The Cath-
olics, having no resident priest, had to go to San
Jose or San Francisco, although their denomi-
nation was the oldest in the place. In 1865
Father King was the first regular priest. In
1869 a new Catholic church was begun in Jeffer-
son street. June 23, 1872, the Church of the
Immaculate Conception was dedicated. Father
King also exerted an influence through which
the Sacred Heart Convent was dedicated in 1868.
During these years the organization has grown,
several fine buildings have been erected in the
environs of Oakland, among them deserving of
special mention being St. Francis de Sales, one
of the finest edifices in the city. There are a
number of Catholic schools in the city, St.
Francis de Sales, Sacred Heart Convent, St.
Anthony's Christian Brothers' school at Fortieth
and Grove streets, and St. Mary's College.

In 1852 St. John's Episcopal Church was or-
ganized with a parish of two families, and is the
oldest Protestant church in Oakland. In 1853
Dr. Morgan preached under the trees ; that same
year a tent was raised, and Dr. Walsworth, a
Presbyterian, held services. He afterwards be-
came head of the Pacific Female College. His
services were the origin of the first Presby-
terian church, as the tents and seats were bought
by members of that denomination, and Rev. Sam-
uel B. Bell (see biography) became the first
pastor of Christ's church. The foundation of
the Baptist church was laid by Rev. Willis. In
1869 Rev. Hamilton established an Independent
Presbyterian church. A Methodist church was
built in 1874. Now (1908) there are more than
fifty churches of various denominations. Oak-
land has become known as "The Citv of
Churches" and "The Athens of the Pacific."

The city is amply provided with educational
facilities, which are being increased bv new build-
ings and new sites. The attendance in 1908 was
an increase of nearly two thousand over the
previous year. The system of instruction em-
braces everv grade, from the kindergarten to the
highest. The progress made and the efficiencv
attained arc matters of pride to the citizens as

well as the teachers and officers. There are
fifteen grammar schools, three night schools, a
Polytechnic and Manual Training High School,
and the Oakland High School, which ranks first
in the list of accredited schools in California.
The new buildings are modern in every detail and
of high class design. In 1890 Anthony Chabot
gave the school department an astronomical ob-
servatory, which is named in his honor and sit-
uated in Lafayette square. The first issue of
bonds for school purposes was in 1868, when
$50,000 was voted for school sites ; in the fol-
lowing year an additional $112,000 was voted
for the same purpose. A bond issue of $960,000
for sites and new buildings was passed in 1905;
of this amount, $200,000 went for sites and these
parcels of land have more than doubled in value.
The earthquake of April 18, 1906, did consider-
able damage to the new buildings and $280,000
was required for reconstruction, this sum be-
ing" apportioned from the tax levy in addition
to the amount brought by the sale of the bonds.
The Oakland High School is situated at Twelfth
and Jefferson streets, and was erected in 1892.
The Polytechnic High occupies the old building
of the high school at Twelfth and Market streets.
The first class in Manual Training was estab-
lished in 1884 in the old Lincoln school building,
by Thomas Olin Crawford. There are several
private schools besides those mentioned, Miss
Horton's school for Boys, California Baptist Col-
lege, Zion German-English school, Heald-Dixon
Business College, and the Polytechnic Business
College. Rev. Henry Durant established his
school in Oakland in 1854, and from it has
grown the University of California. Another of
the institutions situated in the vicinity of Oak-
land, and one that has wielded a lasting influence
for the education and training of young ladies,
is Mills College, established in Benicia, by Dr.
C. T. Mills and his wife in 1852 as a female
seminary. In 1871 it was removed to Seminary-
Park, Alameda county, where adequate buildings
were built and spacious grounds laid out. The
seminary is presided over by Mrs. Mills ; the
course of study is broad and liberal, and as a
girl's school there is not its equal in the west.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

257

Oakland supports a fine public library, which has
various branches in the outlying districts.

The first newspaper, the Contra Costa, was
established in the fall of 1854 by S. M. Clarke,
though the first devoted solely to Oakland's in-
terests was the Leader, edited by H. Davison,
founded in the spring of 1854 and printed in San
Francisco. The Oakland Journal, a German
weekly, was started in 1875. Oakland now sup-
ports two daily papers, the Tribune and the
Enquirer.

In 1863 Mountain View cemetery site, consist-
ing of two hundred acres, was purchased. This
has since been added to and developed, until it
•compares favorably with any other in the country
for its size. In the same year St. Mary's ceme-
tery was consecrated. The following year a
county hospital was established.

The city is well situated for manufacturing
purposes, with its harbor facilities, its three trans-
continental railways, and the settlement for all
time of the city's complete ownership of the
water front.

One of the most important bond issues was
one passed in 1906 for $450,000, and known as
the sewer bond issue. It has enabled the city
to reconstruct the entire system of outlets, and
to put it on a scale adequate for years to come,
with but few additions. The park system is be-
ing elaborated with the proceeds of a bond is-
sue of $970,000; out of this Adams Point was
purchased, the south marsh of Lake Merritt made
into a playground, De Fremercy Park acquired,
Independence Square completed, as was the
boulevard around the lake, Bushrod Park added
to by purchases (the original being a bequest to
the city many years ago), and West Oakland
Park site bought. In 1908 the city council
created a park and playgrounds commission.

Oakland has eighteen banks, with an author-
ized capital of $3,495,100. The total paid in
capital is $2,188,007; tne deposits for June, 1908,
totaled $38,561,051.35. The institutions that oc-
cupy their own buildings are the Central Bank,
the Union Savings, the Oakland Bank of Sav-
ings, and the First National, the last two named
having completed modern structures in 1908.
17

No city of equal population has exceeded this
banking record.

The Board of Trade was started in 1886, and
became the Chamber of Commerce in 1901. The
Merchants Exchange was organized in 18^5.

During the Civil war Oakland and environs
furnished their quota of military force to sup-
port the government. The Oakland Home
Guards was organized August 31, 1861. The
citizens have never fai'ed to voice their love of
country. Oakland has been virtually a Repub-
lican city since i860, when the Democratic party,
that had practically held sway since the found-
ing of the town, was overthrown.

A mention of the introduction and develop-
ment of the land and water transportation is
found of interest. The first ferry to ( )akland
was put into operation in 1 85 1 by Captain
Rhodes. In 1852 the Boston, later destroyed
by fire, was put in service; then the Kate Hay-
made trips until the organization of the Contra
Costa Navigation Company. One dollar for a
round trip was charged.

J. B. Larue organized and put in operation an
opposition line of steamers in 1853, bringing the
fare down to fifty cents round trip. In 1852
Carpentier, as attorney for the Contra Costa
Navigation Company, made application to the
county for a renewal of the license originally
issued by the Court of Sessions to W. H. Brown
and assigned by him to the company, to operate
the ferry between San Francisco and Contra
Costa one year and from July 14 they were to
charge fifty cents for foot passengers, fifty cent-
for every hog or sheep, $2 per head for horses,
mules or cattle, $1.50 for empty wagons, and
twenty-five cents for every one hundred pounds
of freight. It was granted. The construction of
several roads was ordered at this time. In
July, 1853, Carpentier offered to complete the
bridge across San Antonio creek, with the priv-
ilege of collecting a toll of twelve cents for foot
passengers, horses and cattle twenty-five cent-,
one-horse vehicles fifty cents and others pro rata.
The bridge to be exempt from taxation and as-
sessment, he agreed to surrender the bridge to
the county to be used as a free one. within one
year on being reimbursed the cost of construction

258

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

with interest at three per cent per month. It
was accepted by the Court of Sessions and in
December, 1853, he presented his account, total-
ing $15,000.

In 1853 tne county was divided into seven
road districts ; the Stockton road and the one
leading from Union city were declared public
highways, others were established in quick suc-
cession ; the system was inexpensive. The
bridges were the same, several were important,
one between Oakland and Clinton, one at San
Leandro, and another at Alvarado. Toll roads
were generally avoided. In 1856 a gate was put
across the Brooklyn and Oakland bridge, and
only removed upon payment to Carpentier,
Adams and Watson the amount of their long-
contended bridge account. In 1870 bonds were
issued for $20,000 and a new bridge was com-
pleted that year. An act of the legislature em-
powered certain persons to construct a railway
from the west end of this bridge to a point where
the shore approaches nearest Yerba Buena Is-
land or at such a point as a railway may be
built from the shore to the island ; an act was
also granted to other parties to operate a ferry
between the island and San Francisco and to
build a railway from the island to the Alameda
shore. This was known as the San Francisco
& Oakland Railway Company. In 1863, $220,-
000 were subscribed to the Alameda Valley Rail-
way ; the intended terminus was Niles. It was to
be built from the east end of the San Francisco
& Oakland Railway to form a connection with
the Western Pacific near Vallejo Mills. It
formed the San Francisco, Oakland & Alameda
Railway. The first trip was made September 2,
1863, over four miles of track. In 1865 it was
extended to Haywards and later to Niles and San
Jose by the Central Pacific. The Western and
Central Pacific were merged June 23, 1870, and
July 1st, the San Francisco & Oakland and San
Francisco & Alameda were amalgamated. The
latter was completed in 1864 by A. A. Cohen,
who in 1865 got control of the San Francisco,
Oakland & Alameda Railroad, and built the
steamers Alameda and El Capitan, the first
double enders on the coast. In 1869 the Central
Pacific purchased his interests.

In 1868 the Oakland Waterfront Company, a
branch of the Western Pacific Railroad, was in-
corporated. As president of the company, Car-
pentier, on March 31, 1868, conveyed to the
Waterfront Company all of the waterfront as
described in the act of 1852. The following day
the Waterfront Company conveyed to the West-
ern Pacific five hundred acres, some concessions
being made to the city in the matter of streets.
Comparatively few accidents, considering the
conditions, have occurred on the steam lines in
Oakland. In 1869 a collision between the
Alameda Railroad and the Western Pacific killed
fourteen and injured twenty-four; in 1890 part
of a train ran into an open drawbridge, killing
several and injuring many, and on July 4, 1908,
at Webster and First streets, seven were killed
and several scores injured.

1876, Centennial year, was a remarkable one
for Oakland. The West Oakland and Berkeley
branches were put in operation. The Alameda
section of the Dunbarton, Santa Clara & Santa
Cruz narrow gauge was completed. In 1890
the Brooklyn and High street horse car line to
Mountain View cemetery ; the San Pablo avenue
cable line and Piedmont cable roads were in oper-
ation. In 1891 the electric line to Haywards and
the electric line to Berkeley were installed. The
Park street bridge was built in 1892, widening
the causeway between the shores, and the mole
was made solid. In 1908 the Alameda mole
was completed by the erection of a new depot.
The Western Pacific are completing their lines
into Oakland and to tide water, thereby making
the city the terminus of three transcontinental
lines — the Southern Pacific, Western Pacific and
Santa Fe Railroads. January to September,
1908, twelve hundred and sixty-five vessels with
a total tonnage of 681,544, from all parts of the
world, docked in Oakland, an increase of six
hundred and thirty-six over the year from Au-
gust, 1906, to August, 1907.

The advancement of needed reforms and up-
building of the city are being carried through
successfullv. The final settlement in September,
1908, of all waterfront litigation, gave Oakland
possession of her tide lands. Modern business
blocks have been erected, also elegant residences.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

269

theaters, and hotels, among the latter being St.
Marks, completed in 1908; the Claremont, in the
Claremont hills, nearing completion ; Bankers,
to occupy a square block when completed, and
which will compare with any in the west ; Arcade,
opened in May, 1908 ; The Key Route Inn, Hotel
Metropole and Athens. The extension of the
street railway, known as the Oakland Traction
Company, into the suburban sections, is opening
up fine residential districts, bringing the city in
close connection with Piedmont, Berkeley, the
sections about Fruitvale and other new settle-
ments. The expansion of the Key Route service,
and steam lines of the Southern Pacific, nearly
ready to change to electricity, now in operation,
giving rapid and safe transportation to and from
San Francisco, together with the tendency to-
ward clean, independent municipal government
makes Oakland, with her rapidly increasing
population (estimated in 1908 at 265,000 in her
own limits), an ideal home city, as well as an
excellent business location, second to none on
the Pacific coast.

BERKELEY.

In 1772 an expedition was despatched from
San Diego to find the lost bay of San Francisco
and to establish a mission in the name of St.
Francis of Assissi, considered by the Spanish a
religious duty. It was conducted by Father
Crespi and led by Lieutenant Fages, consist-
ing of twelve soldiers, a muleteer and an Indian
guide. They left the south March 20, and on
March 27 climbed the hills that skirt the bay
shore, passing an arm of the estuary, now
known as Lake Merritt, stopping that night on
the Berkeley hills, which never before had been
trod by a white man. Not knowing that they
had passed the lost bay they marched on to the
north, and coming upon a body of water now
named Carquinez straits, returned to the south-
land by way of Mount Diablo.

In 1820 the present site of Berkeley formed a
part of a grant given to Don Luis Peralta by
Governor Pablo Vicente de Sola, and was trans-
ferred in 1842 to his son, Jose Domingo Peralta,
when Don Luis partitioned the grant. In 1852
came the first three American farmers in Oak-

land township, F. K. Shattuck, W. Hilkgass, and
G. M. Blake, who began farming on the present
site of Berkeley. Not a house was in sight from
where they pitched their tents. Years later,
with Rev. Henry Durant, these three men labored
to have that spot selected for the site of the
University of California buildings and campus.
On March 1, 1858, the trustees of the College
of California, destined to grow into the great
university, accepted a site of over two hundred
acres, on the western slope of the Contra Costa
hills, for a permanent location, in what is now
Berkeley. The ground was dedicated April 16,
i860, by Rev. W. C. Anderson, Rev. S. ft
Willey, Rev. D. B. Cheney, Rev. E. S. Lacey.
Frederick Billings, E. B. Goddard, Edward Mc
Lean, Ira R. Rankin, and Rev. Henry Durant,
the founder, and by whom the site had been
chosen.

Standing on the ground where the university
was to arise, these men cast about them for a
name for the future city. Frederick Billings,
quoting the prophetic line, "Westward the course
of empire takes it way," suggested the name of
the author of the poem, Bishop George Berkeley,
who had passed three years in America in the
seventeenth century, seeking to establish an in-
stitution of learning in Rhode Island, which he
would have called Bermuda university. The sug-
gestion of Billings was taken up by his associate^
and several years later, when the town actually
was founded, it was formally given the name of
Berkeley.

This took place in 1878, when by a special act
of the legislature Berkeley town was incorpor-
ated. Within the ten years since the coming of
the university in 1868, had grown up the little
city. The first university buildings on the slopes
looked down upon a small village known as
Ocean View, later called West Berkeley, while
the cluster of houses close around the universit}
became known as East Berkeley, and comprised
the first incorporated town. A superior clas> of
citizens had begun to settle there when the uni-
versity was established in its permanent home.

In 1891 the limits of Berkeley were extended
bv the annexation of Ocean View. Other terri-
tory was annexed by general elections in 180,2.

260

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

1906 and 1908, in the last year stated the first
public park being created by the acquisition of the
old Indian burial ground. In 1893 Berkeley had
become a town of the fifth class under the gen-
eral laws of the state, and a freeholders' charter
was adopted in 1895, with a subsequent amend-
ment in 1905. In 1908 a new, freeholder's char-
ter, framed on the commissioner system, was
adopted, but because of a flaw in the drafting was
declared illegal. Immediately another election of
freeholders was called to complete the work
which had gone astray.

The growth of the city has been rapid ; in 1908
it had an estimated population of over 35,000.
In that year was completed a town hall at a cost
of more than $150,000, the new high school,
worth about as much, having been completed
about three years before. The new Polytechnic
high school was begun in the fall of 1907, on
property bought near the high school. Among
the private educational institutions may be men-
tioned Anna Head's school for girls, Boone's
preparatory school, St. Joseph's Presentation
Convent, and the Pacific Theological Seminary.
On account of the shipping facilities, including
the new wharf on the west front, dedicated in
1908, several manufacturing concerns are being
established in Berkeley. A heavy retail business
is carried on in West Berkeley, and in the heart
of central Berkeley. The banking facilities are
adequate and the institutions are well capitalized
and in a flourishing condition and rank high
among those of the state. Transportation is
afforded by two transcontinental railroads, a net-
work of electric street car lines, and two suburban
systems operating between San Francisco and
Berkeley.

Because of the exceptional educational advan-
tages, Berkeley has become a city of cultured
citizens. Second in importance to the university
only is the Institute for the Deaf, Dumb and
Blind of California, which was located in Ber-
keley in 1866. It was established in San Fran-
cisco on a small scale in i860, and supported by
contributions of a few philanthropic women.
While the embryonic institute was housed in a
building in Tehama street, these women obtained
money with which they bought a lot at Fifteenth

and Mission streets. An appeal for aid was
made to the state legislature and in response $10,-
000 was appropriated for a building on the Mis-
sion street property and for the care of afflicted
children of poor parents. The building was com-
pleted and occupied on January 1, 1861, and the
institute began to be conducted by a board of
lady managers, this supervision continuing until
1865. In February of that year John Francis be-
came principal. December 1, 1866, Warring Wil-
kinson, who came from New York city, became
the principal, and he has since remained in
charge. In March, 1866, the state legislature
passed a bill authorizing the re-organization of
the institute, the sale of the San Francisco prop-
erty, and the selection of a new location within
five miles of San Francisco, by the board of di-
rectors. Berkeley, for its advantageous position,
was chosen for the site, which consists of one
hundred and thirty acres of land, fifty acres be-
ing tillable. The new building was ready for
occupancy in 1869, having been erected at a
cost of $149,000, and the site purchased for
$12,100. There were ninety-six pupils enrolled
at the opening. When organized nine years be-
fore, the institute had only ten. On January 17,
1875, the home was destroyed by fire, but soon re-
opened at an expense of $27,000, twenty-seven
men loaning $1,000 each. The state legislature
appropriated $110,500 at their next session, for
the erection of two buildings, and these structures
were opened in 1878. The following year and in
1881 others were added; the enrollment has in-
creased with the passing years, necessitating other
additions to keep pace with the growth.

The University of California, the pride of all
Californians, and one of the ranking institutions
of the world, has had a phenomenal growth
since its inception. It was instituted by an act
of the legislature on March 23, 1868. The in-
struction was begun in Oakland in 1869 and
commencement held July 16. 1873, in Berkeley.
The College of California, which was started in
1855 in Oakland by Rev. Henry Durant, was
donated to the state and became a college of
letters of the university in 1869, being trans-
ferred at that time ; and through that college the
university became possessed of some valuable

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

26]

property in Oakland. The Brayton school in
Oakland, which was opened June 20, 1853, nac'
become the College of California mentioned, and
really was the root from which the great uni-
versity grew. The first faculty of the College
of California was composed of Henry Durant
and Martin Kellogg. They were unable to be-
gin college instruction immediately because of the
difficulty in enrolling students qualified for col-
lege work. On August 13, 1859, there was
graduated from the Brayton school, which still
was being conducted, a class which had finished
academic work, and in i860 Durant and Kellogg
began college instruction. Meantime, the Bray-
ton school had been taken over by the state as
a preparatory school and Isaac H. Brayton made
principal, with Frederick M. Campbell (see bi-
ography) as vice-principal. Dr. Brayton later
became a professor in English in the University
of California in Berkeley. The old Brayton
preparatory school passed out of existence with
the establishing of high schools and the inception
of the University of California.

The University of California was formed by
an act of the legislature passed March 23, 1868,
which coalesced the College of California and
the Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts
College. The College of California brought into
the combination the literary departments and the
technical college supplied the scientific. This
union was brought about by the efforts of Dr.
Durant, John B. Felton, Governor Low et al.
In 1867 the Agricultural college had chosen pro-
visionally a tract of land north of the College of
California property in Berkeley, with a view to
uniting. October 8, 1867, the directors of the
latter offered to give one hundred and sixty
acres of their property in Berkeley to the state
board of directors of the mechanical college.
On the next day, in a joint meeting, the directors
of the two colleges took steps to present to the
legislature a proposed law creating the Univer-
sity of California. John W. Dwindle (see bi-
ography) prepared the charter of the univer-
sity. The organization was effected by Governor
H. H. Haight, and twenty-two regents. The tem-
porary quarters were in Oakland : the first fac-
ulty of the university was made up of Professor

Carr, college of agriculture; Prof. John Lc
Conte, college of mechanics; Prof. Fisher, col
lege of mines; Prof. Welcker and Prof. Soule,
mathematics. The last two virtually organized
the college of engineering (see biographies of
both), which was actually organized in 1872,
when Prof. Frank Soule was made professor of
civil engineering.

The first president of the university was Henry
Durant, after Gen. George B. McClcllan had de-
clined and Prof. D. C. Gilman had declined to
come to California to take the position. In 1872
Durant resigned, and Gilman then was prevailed
upon to take the presidency. He was installed
November 7. In his administration, in 1S73, the
university was removed to ihe Berkeley property,
where buildings erected by the state were com-
pleted. The institution continued to grow from
that time, developing its possessions, and making
a foundation for its future. After President
Gilman had given up the executive chair,
it was filled by Prof. John Le Conte
(see biography), Horace Davis, Martin Kellogg
(see biography) ; and from 1899. by the present
head, Benjamin Ide Wheeler (see biography).

The years from 1878 to 1890 were a period of
remarkable growth in the university, and of
close financial stress because of the inadequacy of
state support. During those years the Lick As-
tronomical department was given by James
Lick; the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art was
given ; J. C. Wilmerding gave the Wilmerding
School of Industrial Arts ; Stiles hall was given
for the use of the university Christian societies
by Mrs. A. J. Stiles; and an exhibit was sent to
the Mid-Winter fair, from which the university
greatly benefited. Scholarships given by Mrs.
Phoebe A. Hearst were bestowed, and the Har-
mon gymnasium was donated.

From 1805 to 1900 new buildings were erected,
these being the Botany. Philosophy and Acri-
cultural buildings, and East Hall. In the same
period the Hearst Mining Memoria! building was
begun.

On April 29. 1896, regents J. B. Reinstein and
B. B. Maybeck projected the plan of a harmoni-
ous svstem of architecture for the future up-
building of the Berkeley seat of learning. Ap-

262

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

proving of the proposal; the board began at once
a tentative program under the direction of Prof.
William R. Ware of Columbia University. On
October 7. 1896, Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst who
had heard of the proposed plan, wrote to the
regents saying she contemplated two buildings
on the university campus, one of which is the
completed Hearst Memorial Mining building,
then not even designed. She asked that she be
allowed to contribute funds for an international
competition, naming as trustees the late James
H. Budd for the state, J. B. Reinstein for the
regents, and William Carey Jones for the univer-
sity. That same year Reinstein and Maybeck
visited New York and Europe, with photographs
and contour maps of the university site. They
had six thousand prospectuses published in Eng-
lish, German and French, which were distributed
throughout Europe, explaining that when the
plans were fulfilled there would be twenty-eight
buildings on the campus. An international jury
was selected, consisting of R. Norman Shaw, and
John Belcher of London, J. L. Pascal of Paris,
Walter Cook of New York, and J. B. Reinstein
of San Francisco. The contest opened in Europe
January 15, 1898, and ten days earlier in other
regions of the globe, and closed July 1, 1898.
Tbe plans were sent to United States Consul
General Lincoln at Antwerp, one hundred and
five being submitted. Under the care of the
Antwerp municipal government, the plans were
locked in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. The
jury met on September 30 and concluded Octo-
ber 4. having chosen a small number of plans
whose designers were qualified for the final con-
test. The expenses of these last contestants were
paid by Mrs. Hearst, to visit in person the uni-
versity grounds. The final plans were submitted
to the secretary on July 1, 1899, when the com-
petition closed. The jury met in the Ferry build-
ing, San Francisco, August 30, 1899. The first
award was made to E. Berard of Paris, who re-
ceived a $10,000 prize. The university now is
beins? slowly built according to these plans, with
John Galen Howard, professor of architecture,
in supervision. The last great building to be
completed under them was the Hearst Memorial
mining building, and the last for which ground

was broken was the Doe library, to be a million-
dollar structure. The Greek amphitheater, one
of the most famous in the world of playhouses,
is an open air concrete structure laid in a natural
declivity between three small knolls in the upper
university grounds. The accoustics of the place
were noted and haled as wonderful, even before
William Randolph Hearst, at a cost of $40,000,
built the classic theater which not only is
modelled on the lines of the theater of old Ath-
ens, but preserves the slopings of the hollow in
which' it rests. It will seat eight thousand, and
has been the scene of the most remarkable per-
formance ever seen in America — the presentation
of Racine's masterly Phaedre, by Sarah Bern-
hardt, a Greek play in a Greek theater under
Attic skies, the great role portrayed by the great-
est of living or departed actresses.

In 1904, besides the Greek theater, were given
to the university a magnificent library and prop-
erty :n escrow until her death, by Mrs. Jane K.
Sather ; the Bonnheim dissertation by Albert
Bonnheim ; and the Physiology hall, one of the
finest buildings of its kind in the world, by Ru-
dolph Spreckels.

In 1905 the state appropriated $150,000 for a
state university farm, which is located on seven
hundred and eighty acres of land near Davis-
ville, Yolo county, the citizens buying and donat-
ing to the university the water rights. In 1906
the San Francisco fire of April 18 destroyed the
Hopkins Institute of Art and most of its treas-
ures, an irreparable loss. In 1908 Clarence W.
Mackay gave $100,000 to build the new building
for the college of mechanics, which was estab-
lished in 1875.

The administration of the university and its
finances is in the hands of a corporation known
as the Regents of the University of California,
consisting of the governor, lieutenant-governor,
speaker of the assembly, state superintendent of
public instruction, president of the State Agri-
cultural Society, president of the Mechanics In-
stitute of San Francisco, and the president of the
university, all ex-offkio ; and the sixteen other
members, appointees of the governor. Out of
the proceeds of the sale of tide lands in the city
and county of San Francisco, $200,000 was ap-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

lit;:;

propriated for the benefit of the university. Its
resources are : The Seminary fund and Public
building fund granted by Congress to the state ;
property received from the College of California,
including the Berkeley site ; funds derived from
the Congressional land grant of July 2, 1862 ;
tide land funds appropriated by the state; vari-
ous appropriations by the legislature for speci-
fied purposes ; State University fund created by
the Vrooman act, of a perpetual endowment from
the state tax, of one cent on each $100 of as-
sessed valuation ; endowment fund of the Lick
astronomical department ; United States experi-
ment station of $1,500 a year; and gifts of in-
dividuals. The colleges of dentistry, medicine
and pharmacy are supported by moderate fees
from students ; the college of law has a separate
endowment ; and there is also a military depart-
ment in the charge of an officer of the United
States army. The university has the second
largest library in the state, containing collections
of fine arts ; and classical archeological museums,
classified and distributed by departments. It also
has complete laboratories and a gymnasium.

ALAMEDA.

Alameda was originally a part of the Encinal
de San Antonio, transferred to Antonio Maria
Peralta by his father. Col. Henry S. Fitch,
failing to complete the purchase of Encinal del
Temescal, turned his attention to this part of
San Antonio, and obtained from Antonio Maria
Peralta a written agreement to convey all the
lands lying west of a line drawn from the near-
est approach of San Leandro bay to the nearest
water of San Antonio creek, embracing about
twenty-three hundred acres, for the sum of $7,-
000. The transfer was made, but Fitch was un-
able to raise the necessary money. W. W. Chip-
man and G. Aughenbaugh then purchased the
land from Peralta for $14,000 and agreed to
settle any difficulty that might arise with Fitch.
In order to do this Fitch was given an interest
in the land and also he with William Sharon
purchased a fourteenth undivided interest in the
entire peninsula for $3,000. Sharon afterward
conveyed his interest to Colonel Fitch, who in
turn conveyed it to Charles F'itch, his brother.

The latter forced the squatters on the tract to
vacate and platted it in town lots. This prop-
erty afterward was known as the "Fitch tract."

In 1852 Chipman and Aughenbaugh pin up
forty-three lots, four acres each, at auction,
Fitch being the auctioneer, and these brought $80
apiece. They fronted High street from each
side, and on the upper end of the thoroughfare
all business was centered. This street formed the
eastern boundary. The two partners also built
a levee extending across the slough, which they
had to dam, between their property and the point,
a great undertaking for that period. In 1854 the
promoters procured permission to build a road
and bridge across the arm of the channel from
Alameda to Bay Farm Island, and on to t la-
town of San Leandro. The bridge was con-
structed at a cost of $8,000. and later was re-
moved and used in the building of a wharf at the
west end of the Encinal. The road was con-
structed for a little over a mile, twenty feet wide
and with a surface of oyster shells one foot in
depth. The rest of the road was never com-
pleted, although more than $11,000 was expended
in the undertaking. In the same year Dr. I lib-
bard laid out the town of Encinal, and about
this time Woodstock was platted, both now form-
ing the city of Alameda. The first store on the
peninsula was opened by Zeno Kelly and A. B.
Webster started the first lumber yard.

Alameda township was constituted in 1854 by
a special act of the legislature. In covered a
peninsula four and one-half miles Inn?, by three-
quarters to one and one-half miles wide, and con-
tained about twenty-two hundred acres. The same
legislature passed a special act incorporating the
town of Encinal. but the population being in-
sufficient, no town government was organized un-
der this law until the next year.

The growth of the town was slow until [864,
when the Western Pacific Railroad, afterwml
absorbed by the Central Pacific, built its termin-
al into Alameda and located its station in the
neighborhood of what is now Park street. All
business then left the former location and cen-
tered about the station. To facilitate travel, the
ferry boat Bonita, had been established on the
ferrv route between San Francisco and Alameda.

264

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

making two trips daily and taking the place of
the lumber schooner Kangaroo, which began mak-
ing semi-weekly trips in 1850. Blocks were laid
out and sold at auction, thus extending the town
limits, and with the $15,000 realized from this
sale, the boat Ranger was bought in Sacramento
to replace the Bonita. Excursions were inaugu-
rated, and an inducement of one lot free to any
person who would agree to build upon it, was
given. Three hundred applied, but only about
twenty lived up to the terms. C. C. Mason about
this time established the first livery stable ; and
a Mr. Keys opened the first boarding house,
these two men being among the twenty. A. A.
Cohen became one of the first citizens, and
through his establishing of the Alameda ferry
and the Alameda and Hayward railway, did
more to advance the town's interest than any
other man. The first newspaper, the Encinal,
was established in 1869 by F. K. Krauth (see bi-
ography) ; the Statesman was founded in 1871.
The first school was held in 1855, and in 1864
the first public school building was erected. In
1 87 1 a drawbridge was built, giving access to
Oakland, and the main avenue from Oakland to
the business .section of Alameda, a continuation
of Webster street in Oakland, was built. In
1874 the first branch railway between Oakland
and Alameda was put into operation, the Alame-
da and Piedmont street railway being built the
following vear.

By a special act of the legislature March 7,
1872, the town of Alameda was incorporated with
the township boundaries. The act was amended
in 1874 because of the growing needs of the
town, and again in 1876; and in 1878 a re-incor-
poration act was passed. In 1884 under the gen-
eral laws of the state, Alameda became a city
of the fifth class. No further changes were
made in the form of municipal government until
1906, when a model freeholders' charter was
adopted.

In 1873 W. W. Chipman deeded a strip of
land that Santa Clara avenue might be completed,
and Mary Fitch gave the town all the streets,
together with extensions north and south through
the Fitch tract. E. H. Miller deeded for public
use all the streets and parcels of land designated

as thoroughfares in Oak Park on the Encinal.
In 1876 the town was divided into wards, a town
hall erected and the following year the sewer sys-
tem was begun and continued until 1885, when
the present system was adopted. The fire de-
partment, organized as a volunteer department
in 1876, and made a paid department in 1885,
has gradually kept abreast of the growing condi-
tions. The city government began the macadam-
izing of the streets in 1875, and the same year
the first high school building was erected, and
retained in use until 1899, when the present costly
brick structure replaced it.

Soon after Alameda had been made a city of
the fifth class, the Federal government became in-
terested in the improvement of the harbor.
Dredging, which since has been prosecuted at a
total expenditure of $3,000,000, was begun. The
isthmus which connected Alameda to the main
land was severed ; a steel drawbridge was built
across the canal on Park street by the United
States government in 1892. The estuary, as San
Antonio creek has come to be known, was con-
tinued by a tidal canal to San Leandro bay, which
was deepened into a tidal basin. This project,
which made an island of Alameda, was com-
pleted in 1902, and was celebrated by the citizens
of the island city in a Mardi Gras on the shore
of the new waterway. Private capital followed
the government, by the reclaiming of marsh lands
for manufacturing sites. Many firms have been
attracted to the city.

The place is naturally healthy. A superb sys-
tem of municipal lighting is in operation ; pure
artesian water for domestic purposes comes
from a series of wells that were constructed at
a cost of nearly $500,000 by private individuals ;
thousands of substantial, and many of them beau-
tiful, homes have been built ; business blocks
of considerable size have been erected ; the public
school system equals that of any city in the
state, consisting of the high school, evening
school, parental school, and eight grammar
schools. The city supports a fine free library ;
churches of nearly every denomination have been
provided ; hospitals and private sanitariums are
maintained ; the police department is efficient r
banking facilities are adequate and well capi-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

265

talized ; street car service is excellent, supple-
mented by the Southern Pacific broad and nar-
row gauge systems, traversing the entire penin-
sula. Alameda supports a full company of the
National Guard of California. The city is an
ideal residence place, with a population of about
twenty-five thousand, famed for the upright char-
acter of her citizenship — patriotic, horne-loving
people, jealous of the fair name of their city in
the world of industry and politics.

SACRAMENTO.

Sutter built his fort, near the junction of the
Sacramento and American rivers in 1839. It
was then the most northerly settlement in Cali-
fornia and became the trading post for the north-
ern frontier. It was the outpost to which the
tide of overland immigration flowed before and
after the discovery of gold. Sutter's settle-
ment was also known as New Helvetia. After
the discovery of gold at Coloma it was, during
1848, the principal supply depot for the mines.
Sutter had a store at the fort and did a thriving
business. Sam Brannan, in June, 1848, estab-
lished a store outside of the fort, in a long adobe
building. His sales amounted to over $100,000
a month. His profits were enormous. Gold
dust was a drug on the market and at one time
passed for $8 an ounce, less than half its value.
In September, 1848, Priest, Lee & Co. estab-
lished a business house at the fort and did an
immense business. The fort was not well lo-
cated for a commercial center. It was too far
away from the river by which all the freight
from San Francisco was shipped. The land at
the embarcadero was subject to overflow and
was deemed unsuited for the site of a city. Sut-
terville was laid out on rising ground three miles
below. A survey of lots was extended from
the fort to the embarcadero and along the river
bank. This embryo town at the embarcadero
took the name of Sacramento from the river.
Then began a rivalry between Sutterville and
Sacramento. The first house in Sacramento,
corner of Front and I streets, was erected in
January, 1849. The proprietors of Sutterville,
McDougal! &: Co., made an attempt to attract
trade and building to their town by giving away

lots, but Sutter beat them at that game, and
Sacramento surged ahead. Sam Brannan and
Priest, Lee & Co. moved their stores into S ■>
ramento. The fort was deserted and Sutterville
ceased to contend for supremacy. In four
months lots had advanced from $50 to $1,000
and business lots to $3,000. A regular steam-
boat service on the river was inaugurated in
August, 1849. anfl sailing vessels that had conn-
around the Horn to avoid trans-shipment worked
their way up the river and landed their goods at
the embarcadero. The first number of the
Placer Times was issued April 28, 1841J. The
steamboat rates of passage between San Fran-
cisco and Sacramento were : Cabin, $30 : steer-
age, $20; freight $2.50 per one hundred pounds.
By the winter of 1849 the population of the town
had reached five thousand and a year later it
had doubled. Lots in the business section were
held at $30,000 to $50,000 each. The great Hood
of 1849-50, when four-fifths of the city
under water, somewhat dampened the enthu-i-
asm of the citizens, but did not check the growth
of the city. Sacramento became the trading
center of the mines. In 1855 its trade, princi-
pally with the mines, amounted to $6,000,000.
It was also the center of the stage lines, a dozen
of which led out from it.

It became the state capital in 1853. and al-
though disastrous floods drove the legislators
from the capital several times, they returned
when the waters subsided. The great flood of
1861-62 inundated the city and compelled an
immense outlay for levees and for raising the
grades of the streets. Sacramento was mafic the
terminus of the Central Pacific Railroad - -
tern, and its immense workshops are located
there. Its growth for the past thirty years has
been slow but steady. Tts population in i8<>o
was 26,386: in 1900. 29.282.

SAM JOSE.

The early history of San Jose has been given
in the chapter on Pueblos. After the American
conquest the place became an important busi-
ness center. It was the first state capital and
the removal of the capital for a time checked it*
progress. In 1864 it was connected with San

266

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Francisco by railroad. The completion of the
railroad killed off its former port, Alviso, which
had been laid out as a city in 1849. Nearly all
the trade and travel before the railroad was built
had gone by way of Alviso down the bay to
San Francisco. San Jose and its suburb, Santa
Clara, early became the educational centers of
California. The first American college founded
in the state was located at Santa Clara and the
first normal school building erected in the state
was built at San Jose. The population of San
Jose in 1880 was 12,570; in 1900, 21,500.

STOCKTON.

In J&44 the Rancho Campo de los Franceses.
Camp of the French, or French Camp, on which
the city of Stockton is located, was granted to
William Gulnac by Governor Micheltorena. It
contained eleven leagues of 48,747 acres of land.
Captain Charles M. Weber, the founder of Stock-
ton, was a partner of Gulnac, but not being a
Mexican citizen, he could not obtain a land
grant. After Gulnac obtained the grant he con-
veyed a half interest in it to Weber. Weber
shortly afterward purchased his partner's inter-
est and became sole owner of the grant. Some
attempts were made to stock it with cattle, but
Indian depredations prevented it. In 1847, after
the country had come into the possession of the
Americans, Weber removed from San Jose,
which had been his place of residence since his
arrival in California in 184T, and located on his
ranch at French Camp. He erected some huts
for his vaqueros and fortified his corral against
Indians. In 1848 the site of the city was sur-
veyed and platted under the direction of Captain
Weber and Maj. R.. P. Hammond. The rancho
was surveyed and sectionized and land offered
on most advantageous terms to settlers. Cap-
tain Weber was puzzled to find a fitting name
for his infant metropolis. He hesitated between
Tuleburgh and Castoria (Spanish for beaver).
Tules were plentiful and so were beaver, but
as the town grew both would disappear, so he
finally selected Stockton after Commodore
Stockton, who promised to be a godfather to
the town, but proved to be a very indifferent
step-father; he never did anything for it. The

discovery of gold in the region known as the
southern mines brought Stockton into promi-
nence and made it the metropolis of the south-
ern mining district. Captain Weber led the party
that first discovered gold on the Mokelumne
river. The freight and travel to the mines on
the Mokelumne, Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers
passed through Stockton, and its growth was
rapid. In October, 1849, the Alta California
reports lots in it selling from $2,500 to $6,000
each, according to situation. At that time it had
a population of about one thousand souls and a
floating population, that is, men coming and
going to the mines, of about as many more. The
houses were mostly cotton-lined shacks. Lum-
ber was $1 a foot and carpenters' wages $16 per
day. There was neither mechanics nor mate-
rial to build better structures. Every man was
his own architect and master builder. Cloth
was scarce and high and tacks at one time were
worth $5 a package ; even a cloth house was no
cheap affair, however flimsy and cheap it might
appear. On the morning of December 23, 1849,
the business portion of the town was swept out
of existence by fire. Rebuilding was begun al-
most before the embers of the departed city
were cold and a better city arose from the ashes
of the first. After the wild rush of mining days
was over, Stockton drifted into a center of agri-
cultural trade and it also became a manufactur-
ing city. Its growth has been steady, devoid of
booms or periods of inflation, followed by col-
lapse. Its population in 1890 was 14,424; in
1900, 17,506.

SAN DIEGO.

In former chapters I have described the
founding of the presidio and mission of San
Diego. A pueblo of twenty-five or thirty houses
grew up around the presidio. This is what is
known as Old San Diego. In 1858 it was in-
corporated as a city. March 18, 1850, Alcalde
Sutherland granted to William Heath Davis and
five associates one hundred and sixty acres of
land a few miles south of Old Town, in con-
sideration that they build a wharf and create
a "new port." The town of New San Diego was
laid out, the wharf was built, several houses

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

L'G7

erected, and government barracks constructed.
A newspaper was established and the Panama
steamers anchored at the wharf. San Diego
was riding high on the wave of prosperity. But
the wave broke and left San Diego stranded on
the shore of adversity. In 1868, A. E. Horton
came to San Diego. He bought about nine
hundred acres of pueblo lands along the bay at
twenty-six cents an acre. He subdivided it, gave
away lots, built houses and a wharf and soon
infused life into the sleepy pueblo. In 1884
the Southern California Railroad was completed
into the city. In 1887 San Diego experienced a
wonderful real estate boom and its growth for
several years was marvelous. Then it came to
a standstill, but has again started on the high-
way to prosperity. Its population in 1890 was
16,159; in 1900, 17,700.

FRESNO CITY.

Fresno City was founded by the Southern
Pacific Railroad in May, 1872. The road at that
time was in the course of construction. The
outlook for a populous town was not brilliant.
Stretching for miles away from the town site in
different directions was an arid-looking plain.
The land was fertile enough when well watered,
but the few settlers had no capital to construct
irrigating canals.

In 1875 began the agricultural colony era.
The land was divided into twenty-acre tracts. A
number of persons combined together and by
their united capital and community labor con-
structed irrigating canals and brought the land
under cultivation. The principal product is
the raisin grape. Fresno City became the
county seat of Fresno county in 1874. It is now
the largest and most important city of the
Upper San Joaquin Valley. Its population in
1890 was 10,818; in 1900, 12,470.

VALLEJO.

Vallejo was founded for the state capital. It
was one of several towns which had that tem-
porary honor in the early '50s, when the state
capitol was on wheels, or at least on the move.
The original name of the place was Eureka.
General Vallejo made a proposition to the leg-

islature of 1850 to grant the state one hundred
and fifty-six acres of land and to donate and
pay to the state within two years after the ac-
ceptance of this proposition $370,000, to be used
in the erection of public buildings. The legisla-
ture accepted his proposition. The location of
,.the state capital was submitted to a vote of the
people at the election on October 7, 1850, and
Vallejo received more votes than the aggre-
gated vote of all its competitors. Buildings
were begun, but never completed. The legisla-
ture met there twice, but on account of insuffi-
cient accommodations sought other places
where they were better cared for. General Val-
lejo's proposition at his own request was can-
celled. In T854 Mare Island, in front of Val-
lejo, was purchased by the general government
for a United States navy yard and naval depot.
The government works gave employment to
large numbers of men and involved the expendi-
ture of millions of dollars. The town began to
prosper and still continues to do so. Its popu-
lation in 1890 was 6,343 ; in 1900, 7,965.

NEVADA CITY.

No mining town in California was so well and
so favorably known in the earlv '50s as Nevada
City. The first discovery of gold near it was
made in September, 1849; ar>d the first store
and cabin erected. Rumors of rich strikes
spread abroad and in the spring of 1850 the rash
of gold-seekers came. In 185 1 it was estimated
that within a circuit of seven miles there was a
population of 30,000. In 1856 the business sec
tion was destroved by fire. It was then the
third city in population in the state. It has had
its periods of expansion and contraction, but
still remains an important mining town. Its
population in t88o was 4.022; in 1890. 2.5J4 :
in 1900, 3.250.

GRASS VALLEY.

The first cabin in Grass Valley was erected in
1849. The discoveries of gold quartz raised
great expectations. A quartz mill was erected
in 1850, but this new form of mining not being
understood, quartz mining was not a BUCCCSS;
but with improved machinery and better meth-

268

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ods, it became the most important form of min-
ing. Grass Valley prospered and surpassed its
rival, Nevada City. Its population in 1900 was
4-719-

EUREKA.

In the two hundred years that Spain and Mex-
ico held possession of California its northwest
coast remained practically a terra incognita, but
it did not remain so long after the discovery of
srold. Gold was discovered on the head waters
of the Trinity river in 1849 and parties of pros-
pectors during 1849 ancl 1&S° explored the
country between the head waters of the Trinity
and Klamath rivers and the coast. Rich mines
were found and these discoveries led to the
founding of a number of towns on the coast
which aspired to be the entrepots for the sup-
plies to the mines. The most successful of these
proved to be Eureka, on Humboldt Bay. It
was the best located for commerce and soon
outstripped its rivals, Areata and Bucksport.
Humboldt county was formed in 1854, and Eu-
reka, in 1856, became the county seat and was
incorporated as a city. It is the largest ship-
ping point for lumber on the coast. It is also
the commercial center of a rich agricultural and
dairying district. Its population in 1880 was
2,639; in 18qo, 4,858; in 1900, 7,327.

MARYSVILLE,

The site on which Marysville stands was first
known as New Mecklenburg and was a trading
post of two houses. In October, 1848, M. C.
Nye purchased the rancho and opened a store
at New Mecklenburg. The place then became
known as Nye's rancho. In 1849 a town was
laid out and named Yubaville. The name was
changed to Marysville in honor of the wife of
the proprietor of the town Covilland. His wife
was Mary Murphy, of the Dormer party. Marys-
ville, being at the head of navigation of the
north fork of the Sacramento, became the en-
trepot for mining supplies to the miners in the
rich Yuba mines. After the decline of mining
il became an agricultural center for the upper
portion of the Sacramento. Its population in
1880 was 4,300; in 1890, 3,991; in 1900, 3,397.

REDDING.

The Placer Times: of May 8, 1850, contains
this notice of Reading, now changed to Red-
ding: "Reading was laid off early in 1850 by
P. B. Reading at the headwaters of the Sacra-
mento within forty-five miles of the Trinity
diggings. Reading is located in the heart of a
most extensive mining district, embracing as it
does, Cottonwood, Clear, Salt, Dry, Middle and
Olney creeks, it is in close proximity to the Pitt
and Trinity rivers. The pet steamer, Jack-
Hayes, leaves tomorrow morning (May 9, 1850)
for Reading. It has been hitherto considered
impossible to navigate the Sacramento to this
height." The town grew rapidly at first, like
all mining towns, and like most of such towns
it was swept out of existence by fire. It was
devastated by fire m December, 1852, and again
in June, 1853. Its original name, Reading, got
mixed with Fort Redding and it now appears on
all railroad maps and guides as Redding. Its
population in 1890 was 1,821 ; in 1900, 2,940.

PASADENA.

Pasadena is a child of the colony era of the
early '70s. Its original name was the Indiana
Colony. In 1873 a number of persons formed a
company for the purchasing of a large tract of
land and subdividing it among them. They in-
corporated under the title of the San Gabriel
Orange Grove Association and purchased four
thousand acres in the San Pasqual rancho, sit-
uated about nine miles east of Los Angeles city.
This was divided on the basis of one share of
stock being equivalent to fifteen acres. Each
stockholder received in proportion to his invest-
ment. The colonists turned their attention to
the cultivation of vineyards and orange or-
chards. In 1875 the name was changed to Pasa-
dena, an Algonquin word meaning Crown of the
Valley. The colony had become quite noted for
its production of oranges. In 1887 the great
real estate boom struck it and the cross roads
village suddenly developed into a city. It has
become famous as a tourist winter resort. Its
population in 1890 was 4,882; in 1900, 9,117.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

269

POMONA.

Pomona was founded by the Los Angeles Im-
migration and Land Co-Operative Association.
This company bought twenty-seven hundred
acres of the Rancho San Jose, lying along the
eastern border of Los Angeles county. The
town was laid off in the center of the tract. The
remainder of the tract was divided into forty-
acre lots. The town made a rapid growth at
first, but disaster overtook it. First the dry
season of 1876-77, and next a fire that swept
it almost out of existence. In 1880 its popula-
tion had dwindled to one hundred and eighty
persons. In about 1881 it began to revive and
it has made a steady growth ever since. It is
the commercial center of a large orange grow-
ing district. Its population in 1890 was 3,634;
in 1900, 5,526.

SAN BERNARDINO.

San Bernardino was originally a Mormon col-
ony. In 185 1 one hundred and fifty families
were sent from Salt Lake to found a colony or
a stake of Zion. The object of locating a colony
at this point was to keep open a line of commu-
nication with some seaport. San Bernardino was
near the old Spanish trail which let out through
the Cajon pass. Goods could be transported
to Salt Lake from San Pedro at all seasons of
the year, which could not be done to Salt Lake
over the central route westward or eastward
during the winter. The leaders of the Mormon
colony, Lyman and Rich, bought the San Ber-
nardino rancho from the Lugos. A portion of
the land was subdivided into small tracts and
sold to the settlers. The Mormons devoted
themselves to the cultivation of wheat, of which
they raised a large crop the first year and re-
ceived as high as $5 per bushel. The colony

prospered for a time, but in 1857 the settlers,
or all of them that would obey the call, were
called to Salt Lake by Brigham Young to take
part in the threatened war with the United
States. The faithful sold their lands for what-
ever they could get and departed. The gentiles
bought them and the character of the settlement
changed. The city of San Bernardino has an
extensive trade with the mining districts to the
east of it. Its population in 1890 was 4.012; in
1900, 6.150.

RIVERSIDE.

Riverside had its origin in the colony era. It
began its existence as the Southern California
Colony Association. In 1870 an association, of
which Judge John W. North and Dr. James
Greves were leaders, purchased four thousand
acres of the Roubidoux rancho and adjoining
lands, aggregating in all about nine thousand
acres. This was subdivided into small tracts
and sold to settlers at a low price. A town was
laid off and named Jurupa, but this being diffi-
cult of pronunciation its name was changed t<>
Riverside, which eventually became the name I
the settlement as well. An extensive irrigating
system was constructed and the cultivation of
citrus fruits became the leading industry. The
Bahia or Washington navel orange has made
Riverside famous in orange culture. It was
propagated by budding from two small trees
sent by the Department of Agriculture to a citi-
zen of Riverside. The city of Riverside in area
is one of the largest cities of the state. Its
boundaries include fifty-six square miles. lis
corporate lines take in most of the orange
groves of the settlement. By this means mu-
nicipal regulations against insect pests can be
better enforced. The population of Riverside in
1890 was 4,683 : in 1900. 7.973.

BIOGRAPHICAL

SAMUEL BOOKSTAVER BELL.

Samuel Bookstaver Bell was born in 1817, in
the town of Montgomery, Orange county, N. Y.
He was of Scotch and Huguenot lineage, his
father, Archibald Bell, being descended from a
Scotch ancestor who immigrated to America
from Scotland, and his mother, Pamela Mills-
paugh, from a family of Huguenots who came
over from Holland with Hendrik Hudson. His
father and mother both passed away at advanced
ages, being over eighty years old.

Samuel B. Bell was born a student, and from
a child took special interest in natural science
and in search after religious truth, being natur-
ally of a religious turn of mind. His early am-
bitions were for political distinction and when he
applied himself to legal studies it was only for
the purpose of attaining political advancement.
He studied in his native town, in Brooklyn, and
in New York City, and was admitted to prac-
tice as an attorney in the supreme court of New
York ; conscientious scruples, however, prevented
his engaging in the actual practice of law, and he
voluntarily surrendered the profession which had
cost him so much time and labor, and upon which
as a youth his heart was set, and engaged instead
in teaching, taking charge of educational insti-
tutes both in his native state and in Kentucky.

Having always been a close theological student
and deeply interested in the religious problems of
the time, he at length resolved to become a
preacher of the Gospel, offered himself to the
Presbyterian church as a candidate for the minis-
try, and was licensed to preach by the Presbytery
of Onondaga, N. Y., in 1852. He was then or-
dained as an evangelist, and in November of that
year was sent by the American Home Missionary
Society as one of their missionaries to the Pacific
coast, the company consisting of eight mission-
18 275

aries and their families, six, of whom Dr. Bell
was one, destined for California, and the other
two for Oregon. He sailed from New York in
the clipper ship Trade Wind, a magnificent ves-
sel of thirty-four hundred tons burden, and after
a most eventful voyage of one hundred and five
days landed in San Francisco. During the pas-
sage the ship was on fire for ten hours ; a mutiny
broke out among the sailors so serious that the
ringleaders were taken to San Francisco in
irons ; a sperm whale of the very largest kind
struck the prow of the ship head on and set
everything aback; they were struck by a "white
squall" off the coast of Buenos Ayres, which tore
the sail to tatters and snapped the yards like pipe-
stems, while the electric phenomena during the
storm were very striking — bodies of fire playing
around the masts like "spirits of the storm." The
voyage was enlivened by the weekly issue of the
Trade Wind Observer, a manuscript paper, of
which Dr. Bell was editor in chief; some of the
articles were of superior merit and found an ex-
tensive circulation in the eastern journals.

Upon his arrival in California Dr. Bell com-
menced his work as a Presbyterian missionary on
the shores of San Francisco bay, just opposite
the city of San Francisco, where Oakland now
stands. Here in addition to his regular work as
a missionary Dr. Bell has left his record in
various ways. He bought and rang the first bell
that ever called the people to religious services
in that locality ; it was an old steamboat bell, and
was hung on the corner of a fence under a live
oak tree, which was frequently his meeting bouse.
He built the first Presbyterian church edifice upon
the coast, and organized what is now one of the
most flourishing churches in the Union : he was
also one of the founders and procured the char-

276

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ter for the College of California, now the Uni-
versity of California. He represented his dis-
trict in the California senate and house of rep-
resentatives for three years, giving efficient ser-
vice and leaving his imprint upon the legislation
of those years in the Homestead law, in the
board of regents, the bill for creating it be-
ing introduced by him, and in his efforts to light-
en the enormous burden of compounded interests.
He was also president of the first Republican
state convention convened in California, one of
its members being Colonel, afterward General, E.

D. Baker, who was killed at the battle of Ball's
Bluff during the Civil war. Dr. Bell preserved
a lively recollection of the flush times in Cali-
fornia, when gold was so plentiful that men were
apprehensive that it would soon become value-
less ; and of those days of crime and lawlessness
which necessitated the organization of the vigi-
lance committee, a body that was in session day
and night for six months, and of which Dr. Bell
said : "It was the only exhibition of perfectly ir-
responsible power I ever beheld, and yet it may
be said that during all those months it never
committed a blunder or made a mistake."

After a residence of nearly ten years in Cali-
fornia, during which time, however, he had
visited the east, Dr. Bell prepared to take up his
ministerial work in the eastern states, and in
1862 left the Pacific coast for New York by the
overland route. This was his first trip across the
great American desert, and it was upon this oc-
casion that he made the acquaintance of Brigham
Young, and formed his opinion of Salt Lake and
Mormonism from personal observation. He was
treated with the utmost consideration by Presi-
dent Young, saw the "Chief of the destroying
angels," and enough to convince him that it was
not even safe for him to think while in Salt Lake
or vicinity, lest some "destroying angel" should
cut the thought out of his heart, and did not
really feel secure until he had left Mormondom
miles behind. The telegraph wire had just been
stretched across the continent, and the first news
conveyed to California was the death of Gen.

E. D. Baker, Dr. Bell's old colleague in the Cali-
fornia stale convention. The doctor was greatly
i in] tressed with the almost omniscience of the

little instruments which he found clicking away
on their dried mud tables at every station where
he stopped to change horses on the overland
route ; and his description of these telegraph sta-
tions, and the manner in which he used to send
messages and receive replies from all over the
continent during the ten minutes spent in chang-
ing horses were highly dramatic.

Upon reaching the east Dr. Bell tendered his
services to General Hooker, then in command of
the Army of the Potomac, but was not permitted
to go to the front. The same year (1862) he
became pastor of the Fiftieth Street Presbyterian
Church in New York City, and was an eye wit-
ness to the terrible riot which occurred there the
following year, upon an attempt to force the
draft ordered by the United States authorities.
Dr. Bell received the intelligence of the fall of
Vicksburg and the Union victory at Gettysburg
while delivering the Fourth of July oration at
Jersey City in 1863, and was at first disposed to
regard the telegram as a hoax, considering the
news too good to be true ; but when convinced
of the truth he soared into patriotic flights of
eloquence, for he was a gifted orator. He was
frequently called upon to deliver historic and
patriotic addresses, and was always acceptably re-
ceived. He pronounced the eulogy upon General
Baker, before the California house of represent-
atives ; the Thanksgiving sermon on the day ap-
pointed by President Lincoln before the union
churches in New York City ; an oration at Coop-
er's Institute before the Orangemen of New
York ; and the address of welcome at Army hall
upon the return from the war of a regiment from
his native county. He also delivered the an-
nual address before the California State Agricul-
tural Society, the address before the State Edi-
torial Convention, at Ithaca, N. Y., besides nu-
merous addresses at the laying of corner stones,
before colleges, universities and other learned
bodies ; before the Masonic orders, political con-
ventions and mass meetings, and at commemora-
tive military and festival occasions, many of
which were printed and widely circulated.

Dr. Bell was a member of two general assem-
blies of the Presbyterian church of the United
States, one at Baltimore and another at Pitts-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Ill

burg. Before the assembly at Pittsburg he de-
livered by invitation of that body, a very fine lec-
ture on California, and another on the same theme
before the Synod of New York and New Jersey.
From New York City Dr. Bell was called to the
pulpit of the First Presbyterian church of Lyons,
Wayne county, N. Y., and from Lyons to the
Presbyterian church in Hillsdale, Mich. From
Hillsdale he removed to California, having ac-
cepted a chair in Washington College, Alameda
county, which he resigned to become pastor of
the First Congregational church of Mansfield,
Ohio, holding the pastorate there for several
years. From Mansfield he removed to Kansas
City, Mo., as pastor of the First Presbyterian
church there, and remained for a number of years.
From Kansas City he returned to California and,
in Santa Barbara, lived a retired life, passing
away in 1897, in his eighty-first year.

Dr. Bell was made a Mason in 1848, held va-
rious offices of trust in the lodge ; was grand lec-
turer of the Grand Lodge of California, and an
honorary life member of Live Oak Lodge, No. 61,
F. & A. M., of Oakland, and of Templar Lodge,
New York City, having been so elected by those
bodies for services rendered. In politics he was
born a Democrat, his father having been a life-
long member of that party ; but upon arriving at
manhood he cast in his fortunes with the Whigs
until the organization of the Republican party,
of which he was ever a supporter. He carried
the first district that ever gave a Republican ma-
jority in California, consisting of Alameda and
Santa Clara counties. This was when he was
elected to the senate during the Fremont cam-
paign, and this was the only district in the state
so carried.

Dr. Bell was married in his native town, in
1845, to Miss Sophia Brown Walworth, a de-
scendant of the same family from which Chancel-
lor Walworth, of New York, descended. Of this
union seven children were born, namely : Hodie
B., deceased, who married J. P. Martin, and had
two sons, Wisner B. and William P., of New
York City; Hal, a prominent attorney of New
York City, who is married and has two children ;
Edward Walworth, a merchant of Liverpool,
England, who is married and has six children ;

Sadie Pierson, who was born, in San Francisco,
and in womanhood became the wife of F. C.
Havens, at the time of her death leaving four
children, all now residing in Oakland, where
they were also born: Wickham. Harold, Said
and Paul ; Harmon, of whom a brief review is
given on another page of this volume; Durant,
who was born in Oakland and died at the age of
seven years ; and Benjamin Pitman, born in Oak-
land and now engaged in business in New York
City.

Dr. Bell was a man of positive convictions, an
absolute believer in the divine person and works
of Christ, and thoroughly assured of the unquali-
fied truth of orthodoxy. He was the idol of his
large congregations and esteemed as a man of
charity of mind and catholicity of spirit. He ap-
peared as a born theological champion in his
pulpit, had a powerful constitution and one of
the most genial and sociable men to be found.
His experiences and adventures were themes of
never failing interest to the listener, and he was
a captivating conversationalist. Dr. Bell made
the journey to California five times, crossing the
great desert, by Panama, and by Cape Horn. His
name swells the roll call of men who build for
all time, and whose interests are of such practical
and essential nature that their successors must
follow closely in their footsteps or lag behind in
the march of progress and civilization. The sup-
erstructure of his life was founded upon the re-
sources of a great, new state, and upon those uni-
versal principles of toleration and humanity which
man, from the age of civilization, has cherished
as his highest ideals. He was the most devoted
friend of education that California has ever had.
encouraging a high standard and personally in-
teresting himself in its development. He was a
man of great generosity of heart, contributing
liberally and cheerfully of his means toward the
relief of suffering wherever he beheld it. The
record of his well spent and noble life is one to
which his descendants should revert with pride,
conscious of the knowledge that he is entitled to a
conspicuous place in the historical literature of
the state of California, in whose early develop-
ment he took so active and important a part.

278

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

THOMAS CUFF.

Thomas Cuff came to California at the time
when law and order had not become a part of
the civilizing influences, and the impressions
made upon him at that terrible time have never
faded from his mind. He was born in County
Dublin, Ireland, in 1830, and in 1856 he set out
for the Mecca of the Pacific coast, traveling from
New York by way of Cuba (where he spent a
few days) to Panama, and arriving there at the
time of the great riots in which so many emi-
grants were killed and robbed of their posses-
sions. The scene was indescribable, the naked,
savage natives adding terror to the passengers,
who were searched, robbed and maltreated. Mr.
Cuff was relieved to arrive in San Francisco
without personal mishap, but in this city, too, he
found a riotous time. The law-abiding citizens
were attempting to subdue the desperate charac-
ters which infested the town, but there was al-
ways an element which called for the most ex-
treme measures and it was thus that so many
men were hanged, often an innocent man suffer-
ing for the crimes of the guilty.

A very short time was spent in San Francisco,
when Mr. Cuff came to Oakland, and finding em-
ployment on the claims of various squatters he
devoted his time to that work. With his accumu-
lated means, in 1858 he purchased fifteen acres
of land for $40 an acre, this being a part of the
present site of Oakland. He has continued to
make his home here ever since, gradually dis-
posing of his property, until he now retains but
one acre. A part of the property he traded for
a ranch of two hundred and twenty-three acres
in Contra Costa county, which he has since sold.
He has erected a comfortable home and other-
wise improved the property which he still owns.
He rose to a position of respect in the commun-
ity and in 1886 was appointed to the office of
road overseer, ably discharging the duties for
the period of two years, when he was elected to
the same office and following this received the
same honor until he had served for seven years.

Tn Westchester county, N. Y., January 20,
1856, Mr. Cuff was united in marriage with Miss
Maria A. Fagan, a daughter of Patrick and Ann

(Agan) Fagan, and they became the parents of
the following children : Thomas Franklin, who
died at the age of thirty years ; Amanda, Mrs.
Frank Valarga ; Clara L., an oil and china artist ;
Matilda, who died at the age of twenty-nine
years ; Napoleon F., of Oakland ; and Charles
Alexander, at home. Matilda was married in
September, 1891, to Frank L. De Soto, a member
of one of the old distinguished Spanish families
of California. Mr. Cuff and his wife are the
grandparents of eight children.

ROBERT VTCKERS DIXON.

The success achieved by Robert Vickers Dixon
has been entirely the result of his own efforts,
for with nothing but a substantial education,
ability and a progressive spirit he set out in the
world to conquer fate. He is a young man,
practically just launched upon his business career,
having been born in 1875, in Belleville, Kan. His
father was Brigadier-General Adam Dixon, of
New York City, a veteran of the Civil war, who
was taken prisoner at Gettysburg and sent to
Libby prison, where he remained for eighteen
months, escaping by digging his way out. He
won distinction during his service and enrolled his
name among the foremost men of the nation.
His mother is still surviving and makes her home
at No. 1772 Twenty-first avenue, East Oakland.

Robert Vickers Dixon received his early edu-
cation in the public schools of Kansas and Nebras-
ka, then took a normal course in college, and
finally completed his education by a thorough
business training in the Gem City Business Col-
lege of Quincy, 111. After leaving school he be-
gan as a law stenographer and reporter, and
later began teaching in various commercial
colleges of the middle west. Upon coming to
San Francisco in 1899 he took charge of the
shorthand department in the San Francisco Busi-
ness College and held the position until 1903,
when he resigned in order to establish the Dixon
College in Oakland. This was consolidated in

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

28]

1906 with the Heald College and took the name
of the Heald-Dixon Business College. Mr.
Dixon now acts as the business manager of this
school, which is one of the best in this section
of the country, each department being under the
head of a thoroughly efficient instructor, equip-
ment modern and up-to-date, and everything be-
speaking the character and ability of the men who
are at its head. Besides these interests Mr. Dix-
on has stock in the West Coast Printing- Com-
pany of Oakland, and serves on its board of di-
rectors, has invested in real estate here, in stock
in the German Bank, and also in the mines of
California and Nevada.

Mr. Dixon was married to Miss Mattie Hans-
lip, of Osage City. Kan., the daughter of Dr.
E. W. Hanslip, formerly a capitalist of that
place and now deceased. In his fraternal rela-
tions Mr. Dixon is quite prominent, being a
member of Oakland Lodge No. 188, F. & A. M.,
the Modern Woodmen of America and Knights
of Pythias, in the last-named organization having
held all the chairs. He takes a keen interest in
the business affairs of Oakland, and is a mem-
ber of the Chamber of Commerce.

HARMON BELL.

To attain so honorable a place in the commun-
ity as has Harmon Bell is to live worthily and im-
prove the opportunities within the reach of one's
ability and industry. Without doubt the sur-
roundings of his youth had much to do with for-
mulating those principles of truth and uprightness
which are the keynote of his character and have
been the stepping stones by which he has reached
his present high standing in the legal profession.
On the paternal side he is a descendant of Scotch
and Huguenot stock, and through a long line
of sturdy ancestors the sterling qualities of both
are exhibited in his well-rounded character. For
a more complete history of the family the reader
is referred to the sketch of his father, Samuel

Bookstaver Bell, which will be found on another
page of this history.

Harmon Bell is a native of his home city, hav-
ing been born in Oakland March 23, 1855, the
son of Samuel B. and Sophia B. (Walworth;
Bell, their family consisting of seven children,
of whom Harmon was the fifth in order of birth.
Up to the age of ten years he attended the schools
of Oakland, and thereafter continued his studies
in the east, whither the family removed, the
father having been called there to take charge of
a pulpit and engage in other ministerial work.
After attending various schools and colleges he
determined to concentrate his efforts in preparing
for the legal profession, and in Mansfield, Ohio,
he entered the office of Judge Durlam and began
the study of law. He completed his training in
the office of Judge Turner A. Gill, of Kansas
City, Mo., and in 1878 was admitted to practice.
In that city he at once established an office and be-
gan the practice of his profession, meeting with
splendid success from the first, and during the
twenty years of his residence and labor there be-
came known as one of the most prominent and
successful attorneys of the state. The year 1898
witnessed his removal to the Golden state and in
San Francisco he opened an office and began the
practice of his profession in the west. As in the
east his efforts met with justifiable success, his
thorough understanding of the intricacies of the
law-, coupled with an impartiality of judgment
and keenness of discrimination, gathered about
him a large clientele composed of many of the
best and most responsible business men of the city
and surrounding countrv. Shortly before the fire
in 1906 he had established an office in Oakland,
and here as elsewhere he has built up a large and
remunerative practice. In addition to maintain-
ing his general practice he also acts as legal ad-
viser for various large interests, among them be-
ing the Oakland Traction Company and the Key
Route.

In 1880 Mr. Bell was united in marriage with
Miss Catherine Wilson, who was a representative
of one of the old pioneer families of California,
and whose parents, A. C. J. and Margaret Wil-
son, were prominent in the business and social
circles of Santa Barbara. The marriage of Mr.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

282

and Mrs. Bell resulted in the birth of four chil-
dren, two of whom, Walworth and Marjorie,
died in early childhood. The eldest son, Traylor
W., an attorney-at-law, is associated in business
with his father, and Joseph Samuel is still pursu-
ing his studies. With his family Mr. Bell belongs
to the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland,
whose charities he supports with a liberal hand.
In the line of his profession he is identified by
membership in the San Francisco Bar Association
and also the Alameda County Bar Association,
while fraternally and socially he is a Mason of
the Knight Templar degree, belongs to the Mys-
tic Shrine, the Benevolent Protective Order of
Elks, and the Native Sons of the Golden West.
In keeping with the characteristics of thorough-
ness and clear understanding which mark all of
Mr. Bell's efforts he- has decided opinions upon
political matters and is a stanch advocate of Re-
publican principles. W nile *a resident of Kansas
City he served one term in the Missouri legisla-
ture. Mr. Bell's wide experience and successful
practice have placed him among the leading at-
torneys of the state, and have won for him the
respect and esteem of all with whom he has been
brought in contact, a just tribute to his unerring
devotion to his chosen profession. In his per-
sonal make-up he has been endowed largely with
those qualities which inspire confidence, is gen-
ial and affable, and all who know him may feel
honored to number him among their friends.
Large hearted and liberal by nature, he is a sup-
porter of all public movements and of all meas-
ures that will promote the general welfare.

SYLVANUS DEXTFR WATERMAN.

Prominent in the educational life of Berkeley
is S. D. Waterman, superintendent of the city
schools for the past ten years and during that
period an important factor in the progress and
development of the schools. Mr. Waterman is
a native of Maine, his birth having occurred in
Litchfield, September 14, 1842; his father's fam-

ily were among the earliest settlers in Massa-
chusetts, and his mother's people are connected
with the best families of England and Scot-
land. In the academy in his native town Mr.
Waterman prepared for Bowdoin College, from
which institution he was graduated in August,
1861, just one month before he was nineteen
years of age. He then enlisted in Company I,
Third Massachusetts Regiment Infantry, and
after serving his time of enlistment in the army
went west and settled in Louisville, Ky. Dur-
ing his three years' residence in that city he was
a teacher and the principal in one of the ward
schools. Going thence to Greencastle, Ind., he
held the position of superintendent of public in-
struction for two years, and at the expiration of
that time (1870) he removed to California. For
twenty years he was engaged in high school
work in Stockton, and for several years prior to
his removal to Berkeley was principal of the
school. The Stockton high school, during Mr.
Waterman's regime, was one of the first schools
in the state to be accredited by the University
authorities. Upon his removal to Berkeley in
1890 Mr. Waterman assumed the principalship of
the high school, and in 1898 was elected city su-
perintendent, holding the office for the past ten
years and discharging the duties incumbent upon
him with an efficiency and faithfulness which
have won him a wide friendship among the pa-
trons. He has taken a prominent part in all pub-
lic affairs and in 1882 was the Republican canT
didate for the office of state superintendent of
public instruction, but was defeated with the re-
mainder of the ticket.

Mr. Waterman is a prominent Mason, belong-
ing to Durant Lodge No. 268, F. & A. M., Berke-
ley Chapter, R. A. M., and Berkeley Commandery
No. 42 K. T. He belongs to Lookout Mountain
Post, G. A. R., of Berkeley. He has also been
associated with the Odd Fellows, being a mem-
ber and past grand of Charity Lodge No. 6,
I. O. O. F. Mr. Waterman assisted in secur-
ing the Carnegie library for Berkeley and was for
several years president of the Library Board.
In June, 1908, he resigned from the superin-
tendency and assumed the principalship of the
Whittier grammar school in Berkeley. He is

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

always to be found on the side of progress and
development, whether along educational or mu-
nicipal development, ready with time, means or
influence to advance the welfare of the general
community.

CHRISTIAN RUSS.

The history of the Russ family, of whom the
California emigrant was Christian Russ, before
the days of statehood, presents interesting and
decidedly uncommon features, and is an admir-
able practical illustration of the axiom that in
union there is strength, for father and sons
worked together for a half century in the accumu-
lation of a competence which placed them among
the foremost men of San Francisco and the sur-
rounding country. The immediate ancestors of
Christian Russ were respected and patriotic Poles,
who, forced from their country by political op-
pression, had settled in Germany. There Chris-
tian Russ was born early in the nineteenth cen-
tury, and after a common school education
learned the trade of silversmith. He was mar-
ried in his native land, after which, in 1832, he
immigrated to New York City. There he was
very successful in business and accumulated a
fortune of $45,000, only to be robbed of the en-
tire amount and reduced almost to want. With
the absolute necessity of starting life anew, Mr.
Russ decided to immigrate to California, doing
so on the advice of his warm friend, Captain
Sutter, who had written to him of the attrac-
tions of this then little known country. Accord-
ingly Mr. Russ and his three sons, Adolphus,
Charles and Augustus, enlisted in Colonel Ste-
venson's regiment of New York volunteers, and
arranged for the comfort of his wife and
youngest son and daughter on the voyage in the
famous ship Loo Choo, which left New York on
the 26th of September, 1846. The journey was
made in safety and on March 27, 1847, Mr. Russ
sought the office of the alcalde of San Francisco
with the immediate intention of securing several
building lots, and after securing the information
necessary on the subject consummated a purchase

for three lots at $17 each, which price included
the cost of deed and its recording. On this utC
now stands the well-known Russ house, after-
ward the monument of the industry and energy
which characterized Mr. Russ' career during his
years of residence in this city.

With the help of his eldest son, Mr. ku** en
structed a temporary house from the timber.* «>t a
dismantled ship at a point now known a- Pine
and Montgomery streets, and there first estab-
lished his home. The following year a mure sub-
stantial structure was erected in its place, an. I
here was opened San Francisco's original watch
repairing and silversmith's shop. Mr. ku** was
the first artisan to work California's gold into
jewelry and soon became widely known as an ex-
pert on the fineness and character of the virgin
metal. The profits of the business rapidly in-
creased and were invested in real estate ami im-
provements. As the physical aspects of San
Francisco changed, Mr. Russ found himself a
very wealthy man. He erected a more suitable
dwelling house, built the American hotel and af-
terward the Russ house, besides many buildings
designed for residential and mercantile purposes.
The prosperity which attached itself to Mr. Russ
immediately after his arrival in California and un-
til his death in 1857. was due mainly t<> his in-
herent qualities of perseverance and sound judg-
ment; his policy, as he became more wealthy, of
constantly adding to his holdings of real estate
and improving them, was one that could not fail
to bring him a substantial increase in his pi
perity. In all the busy periods of his life he nev-
er failed to impress upon his sons the value of
unity of purpose and of action, and through his
precepts the energies of his sons as well as his
own were combined in one common effort for ad-
vancement.

Of these sons, the eldest. Adolphus G., and the
youngest, Henry P... were noted example* of their
father's precepts. Adolphus G. Russ was born
in Germany January iq. 1826. and being the
eldest of the family, ably proved himself a help
to his father in all his later enterprises, and ma-
terially assisted him in the accumulation of his
large wealth. He was alwavs a popular man
with his fellow-citizens. He inherited his fa-

284

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ther's sterling qualities and love of benevolence,
and was very active in the early days of San
Francisco's growth. In every movement tend-
ing to redound to the welfare of the city, he has
always taken a prominent part. In 1864 Mr.
Russ was made captain of the state militia and
proved an excellent soldier. In 1868, during the
incumbency of Governor Haight, he was elected
to the legislature and served one term. The fire
department, now one of the finest in the country,
was originally organized in 1850 through
the efforts of Mr. Russ, who was an
active member of the Old Empire company,
of which David C. Broderick was the service-
able foreman. For ten years Mr. Russ served
as a director of the German Benevolent So-
ciety and was largely responsible for the
widening of the field of its usefulness. He is a
member of the Pioneer Society and perhaps there
is no living man more familiar with its records.
November 30, 1851, Mr. Russ was united in mar-
riage with Miss Frances Simon, and they have
five children now living. As Mr. Russ ap-
proaches the evening of life, it must prove the
source of the liveliest satisfaction to him to look
back and realize the part he and his family have
enacted in the creation of this wonderful city by
the sea. He has been a friend to historians of the
pioneer days and has never hesitated to assist
any creditable effort in this line.

The youngest son, Henry B. Russ, was born
September 25, 1840, at Mt. Hope, on the Hud-
son river, in the state of New York. Brought to
California in childhood, he was enrolled among
the first pupils of the first public school in San
Francisco and was taught by several of the fam-
ous educators of those times. His education was
completed in the University of the Pacific at San
Jose, of which a Mr. McClay, a competent in-
structor, was the president. Mr. Russ began his
mature life as an engraver, but forsook that art-
istic occupation to enter the wholesale house of
Mebius, Duesenberg & Co. The senior member
of the firm had married Mr. Russ' only sister
and was one of the leading merchants on the
Pacific coast. At the expiration of seven years
Mr. Russ retired from the firm and in 1865 was
married to Miss Plammersmith, a native of Indi-

ana, after which he formed a partnership with
J. E. Hammersmith, his brother-in-law, and the
two opened a mercantile establishment in the
Russ house. The firm passed out of business in
1868, immediately following the earthquake, and
the former partners, with their families, went
abroad, remaining in Europe for five years. Dur-
ing his stay on the continent Mr. Russ traveled
extensively. He visited the Vienna Exposition,
where he studied exhaustively famous art gal-
leries and scenic attractions of note and interest.
On his return to San Francisco he became inter-
ested in the practical management of his father's
estate. In 1881 he was elected a supervisor for
the tenth ward on the Republican ticket, and in
1890 declined the nomination for auditor. Mr.
Russ followed closely in the footsteps of his fa-
ther in many respects, manifesting an interest in
his home city that resulted in the upbuilding and
development of many important enterprises. In
his younger days he was quite an athlete and his
name is honorably associated with the foundation
and growth of the famous Olympic Club of San
Francisco. He held every position in the gift of
the club, from that of president to treasurer, in-
cluding that also of director. It was Mr. Russ
who made it possible for the club to purchase the
lot and erect its present magnificent quarters on
Post street. On the eve of his departure for
Europe in 1869 the club presented him with a
life membership and a dfiamond-studded gold
badge, and wished him bon voyage by giving a
magnificent ball in his honor. It is only a just
encomium to say, that up to the time of his death,
March 20, 1906, Mr. Russ held a high place
among the representative citizens of this section
of California, having in addition to his many en-
grossing business interests been one of the most
liberal supporters of the German Benevolent So-
ciety, the Art Union and any number of philan-
thropic causes, and he had endeared himself to
thousands of persons by private and noteworthy
acts of charity.

The fourth son of Christian Russ, Frederick
Russ by name and a resident of Claremont, was
born on a farm in Hudson county, N. J., Decem-
ber 13, 1837. As he was less than ten years of
age when the family came to the west, he re-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

•>7

ceived his education after locating in California.
Much of his education, however, has been gained
through his extensive travels, which have taken
him to almost every country in the world, he
having spent twelve years abroad, the greater
part of which time was spent in Europe. By his
marriage, which was solemnized in Oakland, two
sons were born, Frederick G. and Ralph A., both
of whom are married and each has a son. Fred-
erick G. resides in Oakland, where he is engaged
in the real estate business, and Ralph A. is an ex-
pert concrete contractor, residing in San Fran-
cisco. During the Spanish-American war he
served as a member of the Seventh Regiment
California Infantry, under Captain Geary.

JOSEPH LEWIS WILLCUTT.

Joseph Lewis Willcutt, one of the early pio-
neers of California and a prominent figure for
years in its most substantial upbuilding and de-
velopment, was born July 9, 1829, in Boston,
Mass.. a descendant of Puritan stock, who set-
tled in the Bay state during colonial days. His
parents, Levi and Sarah (Beal) Willcutt, were
both natives of Cohasset, Mass., the father born
January 24, 1797, and the mother March 6, 1799.
The father went to Boston about 1812, where,
after learning his trade, he carried on business
for thirty-five years or more as a housewright
and ship joiner, his death occurring December 21,

1861. The mother, who died in Boston, May 1 1,

1862, was a descendant of John Beale (as the
name was originally spelled), who, with his
family, came from the Parish of Hingham, Eng-
land, in the ship Diligent, and arrived in Boston
August 10, 1638. His wife was a sister of Rev.
Peter Hobart, the first minister of Hingham,
Mass., and the author of the Hobart Journal.
Mr. and Mrs. Willcutt had two other sons,
George Beal, who died in 18.58, and Levi Lincoln,
a resident of Brookline, Mass. The latter, in
1853, with two associates, established the New
England Roofing Company for the manufacture

of felt roofing materials, a new and heretofore
undeveloped industry, which afterward attained
to large proportions throughout this countn.
Later he incorporated the New England Felt
Roofing Works, with which he has been con-
nected for fifty years — twenty years as treasurer
and thirty years as President of the Company.

Inheriting the sterling traits of character
which distinguished those of his name during the
colonial and Revolutionary period of our coun-
try, Joseph L. Willcutt early sought the develop-
ment of the talents wherewith nature had blessed
him, and although he loved study to a degree,
yet he left school at the age of fourteen, resolved
to begin his lifework and with a creditable am-
bition to make a name for himself. With tin's
end in view he not alone began work, but con-
tinued his studies and by reading and experience
gave himself the thorough command of the many
branches which have contributed to his success
during the passing years. He early acquired a
taste for mechanical arts, and about his father's
work and under his tuition he gained a consider-
able insight into mechanical appliances, which
has proven of great value to him in many ways
in connection with his railroad experience. His
first independent work was in a shoe and leather
warehouse in Boston, and after being engaged
thus for four years he accepted a better position
with a manufacturing company.

He severed his connection with this firm in
1852 in order to come to California, then the
Mecca for all ambitious dreamers, and took pas-
sage on the steamer George Law, afterward called
the Prometheus and lost under that name : crossed
the Isthmus by rail from Aspinwall as far as the
railroad was then completed, then by small boat
up the Chagres river to Gorgona. and from that
point by mules to Panama, whence he took pas-
sage on the old steamer California, the pioneer
steamer to round Cape Horn in 1849. On the
California were many returning Californinnv
among them Charles R. Story. Hall McAllister.
William Burling. Commodore Sloat of Montcre>
fame, as well as others, all now deceased. The
trip was without incident until the steamer had
nearly reached its destination, when off the island
of Anacapa it met with an accident to the machin-

L'SS

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ery and put into San Pedro under sail, where
many of the passengers, among them Mr. Will-
cutt, went ashore and visited Los Angeles. This
was then a far different place from the famous
southern city of the present day, being, in fact,
a village of the old Mexican type with its few
adobe houses. A report of the steamer's mishap
having been sent to San Francisco by pony mes-
senger, relief was sent down and the steamer
was brought to San Francisco in tow of the Eng-
lish steamer Unicorn, then owned by the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company, in command of Cap-
tain Lappidge, arriving on the 7th of May, 1852.

It was not long after Mr. Willcutt's arrival
that he secured employment with the old-estab-
lished firm of Flint, Peabody & Co., who in addi-
tion to being engaged in a commission business
were agents for Glidden & Williams' line of clip-
per ships, which sailed on regular dates from
Boston. He remained with that firm in a confi-
dential capacity until the close of i860, when he
formed a business copartnership under the firm
name of Cox, Willcutt & Co., and engaged in the
hide and leather business, attending to the in-
terests of the firm in the eastern cities for some
two years.

In 1865 the office of Secretary of the San Fran-
cisco and San Jose Railroad Company was offered
him, which road, then but just completed, extend-
ed between these two cities, and formed the first
link in the chain of the present Southern Pacific
Railroad. Mr. Willcutt accepted this position and
withdrew from the mercantile pursuits which
had occupied his attention up to that time. His
well-known business experience was of great
value to the company at this time ; financial
troubles overshadowed them and business skill
was required by the officers of the company in
every department. He continued as Secretary
of this Company until its consolidation with the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1870,
when he was elected Secretary of the new cor-
poration. Shortly after he was elected a Director
of the Company, and these two offices he still
holds, as also the same offices in several affiliated
Companies subsequently organized.

Tn addition to these engrossing interests, he
has also been identified with the street railroad

system of San Francisco, having been connected
with the Market-Street Railroad through all its
changes after it ceased to be operated as a steam
road. He was elected Secretary of that Com-
pany in 1866, which position he held until April,
1900. Fie was also a Director and the Manager
of the road during most of the period of his con-
nection with it, and later, in addition to his other
duties, was appointed General Manager of the
several street railroads later acquired by the
Southern Pacific corporation, some five or six in
number, and which are now the property of the
United Railroads of San Francisco.

The growth of San Francisco and of the street
railroad business is vividly illustrated by the fact
that when he first became connected with the
Market-street road, half a dozen ordinary street
cars were sufficient to convey the passengers
traveling over that route, whereas now some four
hundred and fifty large electric cars are run upon
the various lines of the United Railroads. Also,
when the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad
was completed but two trains were run daily be-
tween San Francisco and San Jose, while now the
Southern Pacific is operating about twenty-five
trains each way between these points, the run-
ning time of which has been reduced from two
hours and a half in 1864 to one hour and ten to
twenty minutes at the present time.

Mr. Willcutt was happily married in 1855,
his wife passing away with the close of the year
1902. He has three children, two sons and one
daughter. The eldest son, George B. Willcutt,
a graduate of the state university in the class of
1879, was engaged in metallurgical work for
some years, but later entered the street railway
business, having been secretary of the United
Railroads of San Francisco since its organization
and also holding a similar office earlier with the
Market-Street Railroad Company. The younger
son, Harry V. Willcutt, a graduate of the Com-
mercial High School of San Francisco, has also
been engaged with the same corporations in re-
sponsible positions for many years past. Mr.
Willcutt's daughter was married in 1886 to Frank
L. Parker, a prominent man in railroad circles,
having been connected with the Atchison, Topeka
and Santa Fe from 1878 to 1883, when he went

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

289

to the City of Mexico at the opening of the Mexi-
can Central Railroad, as its general freight and
passenger agent, where he remained for two
years. He then went to Chicago and became as-
sistant general manager of the Erie Dispatch (fast
freight line). In 1891 he was appointed general
traffic manager of the Great Northern Railroad,
which position he resigned in 1893 to join his
brother in a manufacturing business in Worces-
ter, Mass., in which city he died in 1895. Mr.
Willcutt has two grandsons, both students in the
University of California, one, Harry H. Parker,
studying to become an electrical engineer, and the
other, George H. Willcutt, pursuing the study of
medicine. He also has one granddaughter, Bes-
sie E. Willcutt, who is about to commence her
educational career.

Mr. Willcutt is distinctly a pioneer and very
interesting are his reminiscences of the conditions
under which they labored in the early days.
When he first arrived in San Francisco every-
thing was in the most primitive state possible,
the facilities for traveling the streets being most
meager. The northern part of the city was of
adobe soil and the southern part sand, while east
of Montgomery street, where passable for teams
the streets were planked. Some of the streets,
however, could be used only by pedestrians, as
the walks consisted of a row of driven piles upon
which would be placed a stringer and upon this
a walk constructed by nailing crosswise board or
plank four or five feet long. As there was no
rail or protection of any kind to these narrow
walks and persons were continually passing and
repassing and the boards would occasionally be-
come loose and drop overboard, it made it very
dangerous to travel on dark and foggy nights,
yet an accident was rarely heard of, so accus-
tomed had the people become to be on their guard
and learn to jump the missing plank with pre-
cision. This was the only way of passing on
Battery street, between Sacramento and Pacific
streets, up to the time of the construction of the
custom house in 1854, the appearance of which
at the time of the laying of the foundation of the
building was that it was being erected in the
water. Front street from Broadway south as
far as occupied was at that time planked and so

furnished a good roadway for teams to and from
the water front, there being but limited wharf
accommodations at that time. The most difficult
and unsatisfactory roads at all times were the
adobe, hard and uneven in summer until well
worn, and sticky and gummy in the rainy season.
At one time when flour and tobacco had In ■• 11
shipped in such quantities to San Francisco that
they were a drug on the market, the original
packages were used for making sidewalks and
street crossings in the adobe soil, in the vicinity
of Montgomery and Jackson streets. Mr. Will-
cutt mentions as a familiar sight in the early
days that he has seen wagons stuck in the adobe
soil up to their hubs during the winter rain-,
and there they were allowed to remain until the
dry season permitted their being dug out and
removed, the drivers feeling themselves in luck
to get their horses out without expending m< ri
than their value.

Mission street (then called Happy Val-
ley) was first opened up and built upon
from about First to Third streets, and also
Second, from Market to Folsom streets,
yet Market street opposite Montgomery and be-
yond was only a sand heap, and as early as
squatter troubles commenced in this vicinity. Mr.
Willcutt was at that time boarding on Mission
street, just below Second, and on his way home
evenings had been accustomed to take a trail
through the then unoccupied block facing Sut-
ter, Montgomery and Market streets. When he
reached this point one evening he found it fenced
with a top rail only, so he slipped under it and
had made but little advance when two men sprang
upon him with guns aimed at him. He was
quickly informed that he was trespassing and
told to get out as fast as he could, which order he
reluctantly obeyed, getting new bearings by fol-
lowing along the new fence, the only light OH
Montgomery street at that time being at the cor-
ner of California street.

With a growing demand for a road for good
driving, a franchise was obtained for a plank-
road on Mission street, which in due time W8M
constructed, the toll gate being placed at Third
street, then considered quite out of town, and on
Mission street many attractive houses were after-

290

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ward built. Three or four years later anywhere
beyond Eighth street was called the Mission,
which was then considered about as far away
from the business section of San Francisco as
San Jose now is, and a person who dared to
live as far away from his work as the Mission
district would be likely to be asked if he went
home every night. The "Red Bus" line was then
running out Mission street to Sixteenth (then
Center) street, the fare being ten cents on week
days and twenty-five cents on Sundays.

Pertinent to the subject of street widening,
which was much discussed in regard to Mont-
gomery street after the great fire, which practi-
cally destroyed all the buildings upon that street,
it may be interesting to many to know that such
an important street and great thoroughfare as
Kearny street now is, was originally laid out
and occupied at only half its present width. The
jewelers and largest dry goods stores were lo-
cated on Montgomery street, while the smaller
stores of all kinds occupied Kearny street and
the streets leading to Montgomery. The City
Fathers of those days, however, saw that with the
natural growth of business, Kearny street would
soon require greater facilities for handling the
business of a growing city, and in the early '60s
decided upon the widening of the street, which
they took early steps to accomplish. The City
was among the first property owners to act in
the matter and moved back the fence of Ports-
mouth square, thus permitting the abandoned por-
tion of the square to be used as a public street.
Gradually other property owners on the west
side of the street followed in the improvement,
until block after block presented the sight of
new stores on the present line of the street.
During the time this change was being made it
was a singular sight to see some of the old stores
remaining in the middle of the new street and
doing business, while to their rear were modern
buildings of a permanent character.

The arrival of steamers in the early times
can never be forgotten, so fraught were they
with importance and interest in the lives of
the first settlers. The approaching arrival
of steamers, as well as vessels of every char-
acter, were signaled from Point Lobos to Tele-

graph Hill, where there was a signal station,
a variety of signals having been adopted for
the purpose of identifying the character of
the vessel arriving. These were closely watched
about the time a Panama steamer was due and
when the steamer signals were displayed it was
soon noised about and business to considerable
extent was suspended in many of the stores and
offices. Those who could leave their business
went to the mail dock to learn the news and see
whether they had friends on board the arriving
steamer. Others who had not heard from home
for a long time started direct for the postoffice,
questioning in their minds how long the general
delivery line would be when they reached there,
and whether they would be fortunate enough to
receive a letter, and much pleasure as well as ex-
citement was often shown in such anticipation.

The departure of steamers was of a different
character, though partaking of the nature of a
partial holiday to many, owing to the previous
few days having been more or less a strain upon
them. The day previous to the sailing of the
steamer was called "steamer day." On this day
first came the collection of bills due, as, in pro-
tection of their reputation, remittances had to
go forward by the morrow's steamer for goods
sold by the commission merchants. If monies
due the merchant were not paid on the promised
steamer day, he had to resort to his private purse
or arrange with his banker for the deficit. Ac-
counts of sales then had to be made up and ex-
change bought, which was followed by the writ-
ing of letters, and as these matters could not be
closed until evening, the correspondence and
mailing of letters would frequently run well
through the night.

As to shipments received by sailing vessels in
the early days, they consisted of everything from
a box of candles to a large street car, as well as
many of the early pilot boats, which were brought
on ships' decks ; nearly everything eaten, every-
thing worn and everything used in any way were
among the shipments received during the pio-
neer occupation of California. The street cars were
at first shipped in sections, — sides, ends, roof and
floor, — owing to the ship's hatchway being small ;
but as newer ships were built, they were pro-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

291

vided with large hatchways which would permit
taking a car between decks and this enabled the
builders to afterwards ship cars whole. On the
decks of the many ships fitted up by Mr. Will-
cutt's father in 1849 and earlier were small struc-
tures for the stabling of horses en route, usually
about a half dozen to a ship, and a number of
portable houses for residences were carried be-
tween decks. Up to the time of the late fire a
number of these houses brought out thus could
be recognized in the vicinity of Mission and First
streets, and were then apparently still in good
condition. The first ships arriving were of the
old style, and many of them never left the har-
bor through the desertion of their crews and
otherwise, but were used as storeships and for
other purposes, many being occupied as living
places for several years by men employed on the
water-front, while the "Prison-brig" preceded
"Broadway Jail." The ships arriving later were
new and of the clipper type. In 1853 an& *854
an immense amount of goods arrived which car-
ried the prices down very low, the house of Flint,
Peabody & Co. alone having had fifty-two vessels
consigned to them in the year 1853.

Often vessels entered the harbor in groups of
a dozen or more; reaching the Farallones they
would be detained by fog or calm and there re-
main until the fog cleared or a slant of wind
would spring up and bring them all in together.
Then there was a scramble for wharf accommoda-
tions, as with the vessels then at the wharves a
part of the ships had to await their turn for a
berth until the others were discharged.

The water supply of San Francisco was an-
other important matter in the early times. Water
for the shipping came from Sausalito, water
boats being regularly engaged in the business.
Residences received their supplies from water
carts, the requisite number of pails being deliv-
ered every day to families as agreed upon. The
water carts were supplied from artesian wells
which were bored from time to time about the
city. San Francisco had a large number of cis-
terns constructed in different localities which
were filled for fire purposes, and it was said that
the maintenance of a number of such cisterns
about Mr. John Center's property at the Mission

was the means of saving his many buildings from
the conflagration of 1906.

Mr. Willcutt has been distinctly a citizen, tak-
ing the keenest interest in all matters of public
import, although in no sense has he ever been a
politician. During the citizens' movement fol-
lowing the disbandment of the vigilance commit-
tee, he was sent as representative with William
C. Ralston, to voice the views of the citizens of
the eleventh ward in convention, but this was
rather a spontaneous demand for pure officials
than an ordinary political movement. Upon his
return to San Francisco from the East, in 1863, he
joined the Home Guard, a military organization,
the formation of which was demanded by the con-
ditions existing at that time, and which was com-
posed of the principal merchants and many pro-
fessional men of that city. They supplied them-
selves with Enfield rifles and served until the close
of the Civil war, their services being required on
many occasions.

When asked what the general feeling was in
regard to the organization of the vigilance com-
mittee, Mr. Willcutt. who was well acquainted
with and had close business relations with many
members of that organization, stated that the
formation of the committee was considered a ne-
cessity in order to rid the community of objec-
tionable men. owing to the lax methods of the
courts in the punishment of criminals, and the
number of bad characters about town that
managed to avoid arrest for crimes. Those
under arrest who had been guilty of murder
were taken from the jail bv the committee
and, after a trial, hanged, and other criminals
were banished from the state, all of which
met with the hearty approval of the people.
He relates the experience of a memher of the
first committee who said to him that when it
was decided that a few executions would be nec-
essary, he was delegated to procure a suitable
rope and have it ready on call. He purchased
one and took it to his room on Kearny street,
and when on the evening of the tenth of Tune.
185 1, the bell of Monumental Engine TTot^e
rang out the signal, he threw the rope over his
shoulder and hastened for Portsmouth Squire,
not knowing what kind of a reception he would

292

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

be met with. Two blocks had not been covered
before a crowd had gathered and was accompany-
ing him with shouts of approval as they saw the
rope and surmised from the continued signals
of the bell what use it was to be put to, and with-
in a few hours the hanging of Jenkins had taken
place on the west side of the plaza, or Ports-
mouth Square. This action of the Committee was
followed by the hanging of Stuart and others,
and as it became known that it was their inten-
tion to rid the city of all desperate characters,
many became frightened and fled to places of
safety. The city having thus been practically
cleared of criminals, the committee ceased active
operations, it being understood that certain of
them would maintain a watch over municipal af-
fairs, and should occasion require would call the
committee together again.

This did occur in May, 1856, when the com-
munity was aroused and excited over the shoot-
ing of James King of William of the Evening
Bulletin by James P. Casey, in revenge for an
article published in that paper reflecting upon his
character. Casey was at once taken to a police
station, where it was soon seen that it was not
a safe place to keep him, as the crowd upon the
streets was fast increasing and shouts of "Hang
him!" were heard from all sides. The officers
at once decided to remove him to a place of
greater safety, and the county jail being the only
one of any security, he was taken there without
the knowledge of the crowd and placed in charge
of the sheriffs' officers. Mr. King lived but six
days after being shot. In the meantime the vigi-
lance committee had reorganized and formed
about three thousand armed men into companies,
and after many conferences with the governor of
the state and the municipal authorities, had peace-
ably removed from the county jail to the com-
mittee rooms Casey and one Charles Cora, who
had murdered United States Marshal Richard-
son. The execution of these two men was wit-
nessed by Mr. Willcutt. They were each placed
on a platform extending from the second story
front windows of the committee rooms, a
few windows apart. Casey was dressed in
an ordinary suit, and addressing those be-
fore him in an earnest way claimed that

he was not a murderer, that his faults were be-
cause of his early education, and dwelt upon the
effect his death would have upon his poor mother.
Commencing in a firm voice, it finally gave way,
and from his gestures, continued repetitions and
wild actions, it was generally believed he was
working for time, in the belief that his life would
be spared at the last moment, through the inter-
ference of the United States authorities, rumors
to that effect having been current at the time, in
event of the committee attempting any execu-
tions. During the time Casey was talking, Cora
stood apparently unconcerned and as straight as
an arrow, dressed in a full dress suit, with pin-
ioned arms, and when asked if he had anything
to say, merely shook his head. The hangmen's
nooses were then placed around their necks, caps
drawn over their faces, and at a signal the ropes
supporting the platform were cut upon, the roof
of the building, and the two men were dropped
into eternity, the bodies swinging around for
some time with the untwisting of the new ropes.

Mr. Willcutt mentions as well a second hang-
ing he also witnessed a few weeks later. Nearing
the committee's rooms he found that gallows
had been erected on a vacant lot, on the opposite
side of the street, to which two men were soon
brought, the armed committee forming lines of
enclosure. There was a decided difference in the
actions of these two men, one named Hethering-
ton and the other Brace. Hetherington had killed
a man in some business dispute and desired to
explain how it occurred, and while so engaged,
Brace, who was a very profane man and much
younger, kept interfering and making profane re-
marks. As there was a hangman and an assist-
ant, the latter, finding that he could not quiet
Brace in any other way, stepped behind him
and gagged him with a handkerchief until Heth-
erington had completed his remarks, when, as
Brace had nothing" but curses to offer, the ropes
were adjusted about their necks, the platform
bolts drawn and the two men launched out of the
world.

Referring to the stabbing of Officer Hopkins
of the Vigilance Committee by Judge Terry, he
said he witnessed the surrender of Terry to the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Vigilance Committee and saw him safely landed
at the Committee rooms.

Explaining how the armed committee formed,
he said that upon an alarm being sounded, a rush
was made by the members for "F'ort Gunny-
bag," when guns were handed out and the mem-
bers directed where to go. In this case it was to
form a hollow square on Clay, Kearny, Jackson
and Dupont streets, and as the men reached that
locality they readily found their respective com-
panies. When officers were sent to arrest Terry,
he took refuge in an armory of one of the State
military companies on Dupont street, between
Washington and Jackson streets, and when a
sufficient number of the committee had arrived he
was notified that the armory was surrounded by
armed men and given ten minutes to surrender
under the threat that if he did not the armory
would be broken into and he would be captured.
He then decided to surrender and was taken to
the rooms of the Vigilance Committee.

When asked if he had seen any deaths by shoot-
ing in the early days, Mr. Willcutt said the only
instance was that of a once noted character
known as "Billy Mulligan," who wound up his
career by getting on a spree and committing some
offense for which officers went to arrest him.
He was at the Globe Hotel, southwest corner of
Dupont and Clay streets, and when the officers
entered the building to go to his room he ran
out into the hall, and with pistol in hand shot
down the stairway, wounding one of the officers,
and retreating to his room threatened to kill any
one that entered. This report was made to the
chief of police, who stationed some officers at the
windows of the building diagonally opposite,
armed with rifles and with instructions to shoot
Mulligan on sight. Mr. Willcut, being in the
vicinity at the time, and hearing of the trouble,
went to the locality and soon saw Mulligan ap-
proach one of the windows and look out. when
crack went a rifle, and Mulligan fell dead from a
shot in his forehead. So prominent was he with
the fire lads, that his body lav "in state" at one of
the engine houses until the funeral services were
held.

As to violent deaths in the early days, he
said there were manv caused bv duels, which

were frequent from 1851 until 1854, the custom
continuing less frequently, however, until 1859.
Of these many duels none was more noted or
excited more interest than the fatal meeting in
1859 between David C. Broderick and David S.
Terry, one a United States Senator and the other
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of this State,
the cause of the quarrel between them arising
from a speech made by Terry, who belonged to
the Lecompton wing of Democracy, in which he
called Broderick an arch-traitor ; this was resented
by Broderick, who belonged to the Douglas wing,
and he thereupon cast reflections upon Terry's
honesty. A meeting having been arranged by
the friends of the respective parties (Broderick
feeling that a duel could not be avoided with
honor), all were at the appointed place at the
time agreed upon, and the principals took their
positions. The weapons used were pistols with
fine hair-triggers, and after having answered
"ready" and call "one" announced, Broderick's
pistol was accidentally discharged before he
brought it to a level, the bullet striking the
ground two-thirds the distance between himself
and Terry. Notwithstanding this Terry took de-
liberate aim and shot Broderick in the breast,
and fearing the shot would not prove fatal it was
said that he stood erect with an enquiring look
as though waiting a demand from his seconds for
another shot. Broderick lived three days after
being shot, and his death was considered a public
calamity. The funeral services were held on a
Sunday afternoon in Portsmouth square, an im-
mense concourse having assembled on the plaza
and surrounding streets, with the knowledge that
Col. E. D. Baker was to deliver the funeral ora-
tion. Mr. Willcutt says that the clear and dis
tinct voice of Colonel Baker was at its hc>t and
that the worthy tribute he paid to his dead friend
will never be forgotten by those who heard him
— closing the oration with the following beautiful
sentiments : "But the last words must be spoken,
and the imperious mandate of Death must be ful-
filled. Oh, brave heart, we must bear thee to
thy rest; thus surrounded by tens of thousands
we leave thee to the equal grave ;" then follow-
ing with a few lines of poetry, in his magnetic

294

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

voice, he feelingly emphasized the final words,
•'Good friend! True heart! Hail and farewell!"

The services of Mr. Willcutt in the upbuilding
of San Francisco from the days of its infancy
cannot be expressed in words ; the evidence is
in existence in many different ways. That he
occupies a foremost position among the citizens
of both San Francisco and Oakland (to which
city he removed to make his home in 1875) is an
evidence of the value of those services, the char-
acter of the man and his worth as a citizen.

He was never permanently connected with any
church. His parents having settled in Boston, the
family attended the old Park Street Congrega-
tional church, one of the noted landmarks of that
city at the present time. After the arrival in
San Francisco in i860 of that patriotic, eloquent
and noted Divine, Rev. Thomas Starr King,
Mr. Willcutt became attracted by his interesting
discourses, and with his family attended the Uni-
tarian Church for many years.

Mr. Willcutt, along with a host of early pio-
neers, felt keenly the great disaster of 1906, re-
sulting in the destruction of the magnificent city
which he had seen gradually arise from the ashes
of the fire of May, 185 1. but knowing the pluck
and will of the inhabitants of the great cosmo-
politan city of the Pacific coast, and the facilities
for rebuilding which did not exist in the early
days, he predicts the rapid reconstruction of the
destroyed city, grander and more substantial than
before.

He is now approaching the twilight hours of
life, when rest and recreation will be his due
because of the early activities of his manhood
years ; it has been said of him, and truly, that he
can look back without regret to the past years
and the road over which he has traveled thus
far, for he has brought to bear in his daily life
those high principles of honor, honesty and up-
rightness which were a part of his inheritance
from a Puritan ancestry, dealing out to all men
the justice which he expected and demanded, ever
tempering justice with mercy and practicing a
consideration which is not commonly found
among men whose lives have been so replete with
important undertakings.

He is charitably inclined, holding a ready and
helping hand to those less fortunate than himself.
Genial and kindly in temperament, he has won a
host of friends among the older as well as the
younger generation, all appreciating the sterling
traits of character which have distinguished his
career both in public and private life.

FREDERICK T. and NANCY JOSEPHINE
HOUGHTON.

Both of the names which head this brief re-
view are those of California pioneers, long resi-
dents of the state and during the many years
of citizenship most potent factors in the develop-
ment of resources and upbuilding of public in-
terests. Mr. Houghton, who is now prominent
in mining circles, was born in Massachusetts
April 15, 1825, and there received a common
school education, besides which he attended the
Manual Labor Training School at Worcester.
In manhood he went to Florida and lived there
three years, and then came to California, this
being in famous '49. After his arrival in the
state he followed mining for a time, after which
he came to San Francisco and engaged as a
wholesale merchant in the willowware business.
The home of Mr. Houghton and his wife was
located in Oakland, on the block bounded by
Thirteenth and Fourteenth streets, Washington
and Clay, which was owned by Mrs. Houghton's
mother, and where she set out the first locust
trees planted in Oakland. A considerable por-
tion of their time has been passed in Mariposa
county, in Hornitos township, where Mr. Hough-
ton owns two quartz mines.

In Oakland, in 1859, Mr. Houghton married
Nancy Josephine Moore, who was born in St.
Louis, Mo., April 19, 1844, a daughter of John
T. and Mary (Hickman) Moore, both natives
of Pennsylvania. The father, a descendant of
Scotch ancestry, was a pioneer of California in
1852, coming via the Isthmus of Panama in quest
of fortune. He engaged in mining for some time
in Nevada, being one of the discoverers of the
Bodie mine, while he also became interested later
in the New Almaden mine in Santa Clara. His

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

home was in San Francisco for some years, and
j he was there a member of the vigilance commit-
! tee and in many other ways sought the estab-
lishment and maintenance of law and order.
While in Esmeralda county, Nev., he served as
justice of the peace. His death occurred in
Placerville, near which he had established his
home, being then sixty-five years of age; his
: wife survived to the age of seventy-eight years.
Four daughters came to California : Mrs. Eliz-
abeth C. Roff, formerly of Pomona, Cal., and
' who died at the age of seventy-five years ; Martha
: E. Scott, deceased ; Mary M. Hayes, residing in
Pomona; and Nancy Josephine Houghton. The
last-named came to California at the age of ten
years to join her parents, and here received her
education through an attendance of the public
schools of San Francisco and also the Mrs.
Blake Seminary of Oakland, after which she met
and married Mr. Houghton. They became the
parents of twelve children, namely : Mary Eliz-
abeth, widow of Daniel P. Clark, residing with
her three children, John P., Josephine and Nina,
on Eighteenth street, in East Oakland; Nannie
Moore, wife of Louis Peterson, of Catheys val-
<ley, Mariposa county, and mother of three chil-
dren, Louis A., Margaret Josephine and Helen
May; Frederick Samuel, a railroad man of
Bakersfield. who has four children, Clayton
Frederick, Irene, Arnold and Hattie ; Lincoln
Moore, a resident of Oakland ; Martha W., wife
of J. B. Appling, on Twenty-fifth street, near
Broadway, in Oakland, with two living children,
Naomi and Ruth ; Edith M. Ivy, who has one
daughter, Gladys, and resides in Oakland ; John
Grant, a resident of Bakersfield, Cal. ; Helen M.,
deceased, and twin of Florence B., wife of Will-
iam Wallace Coltrin, of Calistoga, who has two
children, Arnold and Martha ; William S., who
lives in Oakland and has one son, William Mc-
Donald; Daniel Arnold, deceased; and Lillian
M., at home. All the children but Mrs. Appling
were born in California, she being born in
Massachusetts.

Mr. and Mrs. Houghton have been associated
For many years with the social life of Oakland,
n which they have both taken a prominent part,
rle is a Mason, having been made a member in

297

Live Oak Lodge in 1859 and afterward became
a charter member of Alcatraz Lodge, and before
any chapter of the Eastern Star was instituted
in Oakland, both Mr. and Mrs. Houghton had
conferred upon them in 1&60, by J. W. Whicker,
the degree which admitted them to membership,
and later Mrs. Houghton was instrumental in
forming Centennial Chapter, now known as Unity
Chapter, of which she was the first matron.
She is now demitted. She is not associated with
other fraternal societies, although her father was
a prominent Odd Fellow, the oldest in the state
and in fact in the United States, and in Hum-
boldt county was a factor in the organization of
Areata Lodge. In religion Mr. Houghton is a
Spiritualist and his wife was a memher of the
Presbyterian Church until after the demise of
Rev. Dr. Hamilton.

ISAAC LAWRENCE REQUA.

Among the early pioneers whose lives have
left a definite impress on the history of the state
none is more worthy of mention than the late
Isaac Lawrence Requa. He came of a long line
of ancestry, and part of his inheritance was
those sterling qualities of mind and heart which
gave him the courage to succeed in his life
work, and the intelligence to carve out a future
worth while for himself and for those dear to
him. Mr. Requa's ancestors were Huguenots,
who fled from France to England and thence to
America, settling in New York state in 1689.

Isaac L. Requa was bom in Tarry town, on
the Hudson, November 28, 1828, his father be-
ing Jacob Requa and his mother Eliza Law-
rence. The Lawrences of Westchester county
descended from three brothers who immigrated
to the colony of New Amsterdam in 1641. They
had previously left England for a settlement in
Holland. Lawrence is a favorite family name in
the Requa family, and Mr. Requa's grandson
bears the honored name of Lawrence Requa.
Isaac L. Requa lived up fully to the traditions

298

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

of his family. A sentiment has been passed on
to later generations, reading:

"To all who bear the honored name of Requa,
'Onlv the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.' "

The Revolutionary roll of honor is of absorb-
ing interest, and its history is identified with the
stirring events which brought freedom to our
great nation.

Isaac Lawrence Requa obtained his early edu-
cation in the district schools of Tarrytown, go-
ing later to the Newman Academy, situated on
the spot where the Requa forebears captured
Major Andre. At the age of eighteen he went
to New York City, and was one of the brave
young men to answer the call of the far west.
His ancestors before him, knowing no fear, had
crossed the seas in frail barks, and he felt the
call stirring in him also, and answered Califor-,
nia's call. The "days of forty-nine" saw him in
a sailing vessel, bound around the Horn for Cali-
fornia, one of the most upright, one of the
bravest and most courageous of those pioneers
who laid the foundation of the Golden State.
The history of the days of forty-nine is well
known to later Californians. They were days of
excitement, days of adventure, days of charm.
Men lived strenuous lives, full of danger; they
were crude lives, along primitive lines, but they
brought out character, and tested men's nerves
and hearts as did no other days of this historic
time. Isaac Requa fearlessly pushed his way
from the first, and even from the sailing days of
the Atlantic and Pacific men respected him, and
many were proud in those primitive days, when
all were equal, to call him their friend. It is a
fascinating chapter of life that one might read
in those early fifties. It tells a story of a life
of hardship, of toil, of privation, but it tells a
story, too, of splendid effort, of success won by
intelligent work and superb endurance.

Early in the fifties Mr. Requa determined to
devolc his energies to mining, and in 1861 he
went to Virginia City, and on the famous Corn-
stock lode he found the beginnings of the great
fortune which rewarded his years of work. But
it was not the fortune which so profoundly in-

fluenced his life. In 1863, in San Francisco, he
married Sarah J. Mower, to whom he was most
devotedly attached. Their life for the long span
of years they spent together was an exceedingly
happy one. Mrs. Requa presided over an ideal
home, and Mr. Requa remained the lover hus-
band, whose devotion to his wife, a devotion
that was truly returned, brightened one of the
most beautiful homes in the land. In the rude
mining district of Nevada they established their
first little home, and though it was on primitive
lines, in all Nevada there could be found no hap-
pier little home. Mrs. Requa was an ideal home
keeper — homekeeping was always her great gift
— and they were both proud of their little home,
and happy in it always. As fortune smiled upon
them and their mining interests grew greater,
Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Requa came to California
and selected a site for their future home on the
beautiful hills of Piedmont, and here "High-
lands," the historic home of the Requas, was built.
Beautiful grounds have been developed around it
and the house has been a landmark all these
years. It has been one of the most beautiful
country homes on the coast, a home in which
Mr. Requa found ideal happiness, and over
which Mrs. Requa presided with much dignity,
and with the genuine kindness which meant
much to her friends and relatives, for in all
their prosperity the Requas never forgot old
friends. The latchsiring was always out for
friends, old and new. And as wealth grew
apace it meant much to others, for the Requas,
happy in each other and in their beautiful home
relations, developed a rare sympathy for others.
They were unspoiled in the midst of all that for-
tune showered upon them. Mrs. Requa was al-
ways foremost in every work of charity, and her
name is historic in the annals of Pacific coast
history. One sees her charitable efforts begin-
ning in the early history of Nevada, in the found-
ing of the little church at Gold Hill, and later,
in Oakland, in the Old Ladies' Home, and in the
Fabiola Hospital. Their records show days of
unselfish devotion and of generous contributions
to needv causes. Of the individuals who have
been helped, their history is written only in the
grateful annals of human hearts. Perhaps no

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

woman in California has the executive ability of
Mrs. Requa, managing as she does, and giving
personal supervision to one of the largest estates
in California. The same fine executive ability,
joined to great human sympathy, found a typical
expression in the magnificent work accomplished
for the soldiers in the Spanish-American war.
Thousands of soldiers as they arrived in San
Francisco, exhausted tfrom the long overland
journey, were fed and clothed at the ferry build-
ing, and saved from serious illness. Through
Mrs. Requa's splendid efforts the Convalescents
Home for sick soldiers returning from the Phil-
ippines was established, and many a family was
comforted and assisted in war time by the gen-
erous help of both Mr. and Mrs. Requa. In all
her philanthropies Mrs. Requa had always the
sympathetic assistance of her husband, his ap-
proval and appreciation of her work, and she,
in turn, has been the inspiration for much that
has made him a power in the social and business
world.

"Highlands" has stood for the highest ideals
in family life ; human interest has centered about
it, and its social prestige has remained un-
dimmed. With such an environment it was
natural that Mr. Requa, strong of mind and true
of heart, should have developed successful busi-
ness interests along many different lines. He
was for years interested in most important min-
ing properties on the Comstock lode ; he was for
years superintendent of the famous Cholar-
Potosi mine, and superintendent of the Gould
and Curry mine ; he had for many years little
to do with mining stocks, but he believed heart-
ily in all legitimate mining, developing mines
rather than stock speculations.

In the political world also Mr. Requa was a
power, having given much time and thought to
the management of public affairs in Nevada. He
worked consistently for the success of the Re-
publican party, in whose principles he thoroughly
believed. In Nevada he received the nomination
of the Republican party for the senate, but was
obliged to decline on account of business en-
gagements. He was for many years chairman
of the Republican state central committee, and
contributed liberally to his party, both of his

time and means. For a number of years he was
a member of the governor's military staff of
Nevada, holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
He was interested in the big railroad undcrt.tk
ing of the Huntington-Stan ford-Crocker o,n\
bine. For fourteen years he was president of
the Central Pacific Company and was also a
director in other Huntington lines during the
life time of the late Collis P. Huntington. For
several years Mr. Requa was president of the
Oakland Bank of Savings, and responsible in
many ways for its present stability. He was also
a member of the Masonic fraternity, of Knight
Templar degree.

Few "lives have been fuller of well ordered
activities than have those of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac
L. Requa. They have been true as steel to their
friends, kind and generous to all about them, un-
spoiled by Fortune's gifts, great of heart, look-
ing out on the world of wide horizons. And
when the day came that Mr. Requa answered
the great call a beautiful life went out, a life
full of purpose, that had stood always for tin-
best things our world may know. At High-
lands Mrs. Requa bravely carries on the work
left for her to do, and the two children. Mark
L. Requa and Amy Requa Long, bid fair to
represent in highest measure the ideals passed
to them by their much loved father.

Mark L. Requa married Miss Florence Her-
rick, and has three promising children, and one
of the most representative homes about the bay.
Though a comparatively young man he has
achieved great financial success, and is the type
of America's forceful young men of which our
nation is so justly proud. Amy Requa became
the wife of Gen. Oscar Fitzalcn Long, the latter
widely known in military circles, a brave sol lier,
and a man of wide sympathies and sterling char-
acter. They have two charming daughters, Amy
and Sally Long. Mrs. Long is a young matron
of fine intellectual development, a splendid mu-
sician, and she represents in high measure the
characteristics that are expected from the only
daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Requa.

It was the pioneers of "the days of forty-nine"
who laid the foundation of California's pros-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

303

In Oakland, in September, 1855, Mr. Morse
was united in marriage with Miss Virginia E.
Heslep, a native of Illinois, who accompanied
her parents to California in childhood. They be-
came the parents of seven children, but of this
number only two are now living, Emma, the wife
of Mathew de la Montanya, and Anna, the wife
of C. F. MacMullen, both of Oakland. A son,
George B., died at the age of forty years, leav-
ing three children. Mrs. Morse passed away in
1907. In 1872 Mr. Morse erected a beautiful
residence at the corner of Hanover and Newton
avenues, his property at that time consisting of a
ranch of eleven acres. He has always taken a
great interest in mines and mining, and at the
present writing has large interests in Nevada,
California and Oregon, with which he became
associated in 1882. In 1861 he became associated
with the Oakland Guards, of which he was cap-
tain for about ten years, and afterwards he was
appointed to the staff of the Major-General of
California with the commission of lieutenant-
colonel. While serving as provost marshal he
had many thrilling experiences, both during the
enrollment and prior to the draft made during
the war. Since coming to Oakland he has been
deeply interested in the city's upbuilding, and
has contributed liberally toward all its public
improvements. In every sense of the word he
has proven himself a loyal, patriotic and earnest
citizen, and is justly entitled to a place among
the representative pioneers of the bay section of
California.

GEORGE CLEMENT PERKINS.

A record of the life of George C. Perkins,
United States senator and former governor of
California, is in some respects a chapter in the
history of the rise and progress of California.
It is now (1908) a little more than a half cen-
tury since he first cast his lot with the inhabi-
tants of California, and, by reason of his identifi-
cation with the development of its various re-
sources during the constructive period of the

state, and his intimate association with its most
vital interests from the early history of its state-
hood, he has been regarded as one of its repre-
sentative citizens, whose experience in the af-
fairs of the state and in the numberless enter-
prises with which he has had to do, entitles his
opinion on questions of general public interests
to thoughtful consideration.

Mr. Perkins' earliest recollections take him
back to the seaport town of Kennebunkport, Me.,
where he was born August 23, 1839. Of English
descent, his ancestry can be traced back to the
days when Sir Ferdinand Georges received from
James II a patent to the territory lying between
the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels and was
appointed governor-general of New England.
Among the earliest settlers of Maine, the fore-
fathers were men of powerful physique, well
fitted to withstand the rigor which was but an
incident in the lives of those early settlers, who,
without exception, lived beyond the scriptural
allotment of three score and ten years. His
father, Clement Perkins, engaged as a sailor and
officer of vessels trading with the West Indies,
and along the coast of New England. He owned
several small tracts of land, but such was the im-
poverished condition of the soil that it was <>nl>
by the use of seaweed and other fertilizers that
a fair crop could be obtained. While Mr. Per-
kins points with pride to his paternal ancestry,
his antecedents on the maternal side are no lesi
distinguished, his mother, formerly Lucinda Fair-
field, being a relative of Governor Fairfield, and.
also, Governor King, the first governor of Maine
after its separation from Massachusetts

Mr. Perkins recalls his early boyhood training
as one of the most rigid, and, in some respects,
cheerless experiences of his life. Before and
after school, which he attended three months oat
of the twelve, he worked on the home farm or
that of his uncle Stephen, and the remainder of
the year was spent in a similar manner. The
duties, which were irksome in themsclve-. were
made more so from the fact that they had no
bearing whatever upon the chief ambition of his
life, namely, to become captain of a vessel. With
this idea ever in his mind, he devoured whatever
information he could find in the line of math*

304

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

matics, geography and navigation, and when only
thirteen years of age applied for a position as
cabin boy on the new ship Lizzie Thompson,
about to sail for New Orleans. Meeting with
refusal on account of his youth, he secreted him-
self on the ship, and, after leaving port, on being
discovered, was made a cabin boy. If his young
dreams of the sailor's life had been devoid of
hardship, his disappointment must have been
great, for perils and hardships were the rule
rather than the exception during the first four
years of his experience. He made seven voy-
ages between New Orleans, other ports in the
United States and Europe. If his experiences
could be recounted they would read like a ro-
mance. During one of his voyages on the ship
Luna he fell in with an old sailor who had re-
cently returned from California, and it was
largely through the persuasions of his shipmate
that he determined to seek his fortune in the
Golden state. Looking back over the years that
have intervened he recalls the thrilling expe-
riences while rounding Cape Horn on the clip-
per ship Galatea, and among his cherished pos-
sessions is a painting of the old ship on which
the voyage was made.

In common with thousands of others, Mr. Per-
kins was attracted to the mines by the reports
of fabulous wealth which his predecessors had
secured. He remained in San Francisco only
long enough to earn the money to provide him-
self with the necessary equipment to proceed to
die interior. Working his passage to Sacra-
mento, he walked from there to Butte and Sierra
counties, carrying his blankets and provisions on
his back. An experience of several months at
placer mining in Butte, Plumas and Sierra coun-
ties, lessened his mining ardor considerably, but
nevertheless he went to the Fraser river, excite-
ment in that region then being at its height.
Still unsuccessful, and with funds exhausted, he
wisely decided to give up mining entirely and
once more made his way to Sacramento, work-
ing his passage on a steamboat. From: the lat-
ter city he walked to the mining camp of Ophir,
now Oroville, Butte county, where for a time he
drove a nude team and later worked as porter in
a store. Frugal habits and the exercise of rigid

economy at last resulted in the accumulation of
$800, which, in addition to $1,200 borrowed from
friends and acquaintances, was used in the pur-
chase of a ferry at Long's bar. On selling out
a short time afterward he realized a profit of
$1,000. Later he accepted a clerkship with the
firm for which he had worked at a salary of $60
per month, and it was not long before he started
into business in a small way on his own ac-
count. Ambitious for still greater progress, he
erected a flour miil, and, through strict atten-
tion to business, liberal and fair dealing, grad-
ually increased his operations until his trade in
general merchandise, produce and provisions
amounted to $500,000 annually. When it is re-
membered that he at this time was little more
than twenty years of age, it leaves no room for
doubt that he possessed indomitable spirit and
that his early successes were but the foreshadow-
ing of a more prosperous career.

Besides interesting himself to some extent in
lumbering and mining, raising and selling live
stock, at Chico, in 1873, in connection with N.
D. Rideout and others, he established the Bank
of Butte County, becoming a director, in which
capacity he has continued to the present time.
Later, an association was formed with the firm
of Goodall & Nelson, the name becoming Good-
all, Nelson & Perkins, this in time becoming in-
corporated as the Goodall, Nelson & Perkins
Steamship Company, and finally becoming
merged into the Pacific Coast Steamship Com-
pany. From a nucleus of two or three small
steam vessels, they added to their capacity as in-
creasing business demanded, until twenty-one
steamers under their name plied the coast from
Sitka, Alaska, to Mexico. Mr. Perkins was also
largely interested in a railroad which extended
from Cuffey's Cove to the redwood timberlands
of Mendocino county, besides being president of
the Pacific Coast Railway, whose course ran
through Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo
counties, terminating at Port Harford. The in-
terests of the corporation known as Starr & Co.,
operating flour mills at Vallejo and Port Costa,
were greatly augmented by the business experi-
ence and conservative judgment of Mr. Perkins,
who was one of the directors, holding the same

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

office in the California State Bank at Sacramento,
the First National Bank of San Francisco, the
latter ranking among the strongest financial in-
stitutions on the Pacific coast. Mr. Perkins is
an active member of the Chamber of Commerce
of San Francisco, the California State Board of
Trade anc1 other commercial organizations. He
was president two terms of the San Francisco
Chamber of Commerce and the Art Association,
and he has been a trustee of the Academy of
Sciences since 1880. He is also a member of the
principal social and literary clubs in San Fran-
cisco, Oakland and in Washington, D. C.

While Mr. Perkins has been a successful mer-
chant, farmer, miner and sailor, it is in the ca-
pacity of the "servant of the people," a title
which he is proud to bear, that he has won hi?
most lasting laurels. His political career may
be said to date from i860, at which time he cast
his first vote, this being for Abraham Lincoln
for president of the United States. On the
ticket of the Republican party in a very strong
Democratic district, he was elected to the state
senate in 1869 for the senatorial district of Butte
county, serving in the sessions of 1869-70 and
1871-72. This service was followed in 1873 by
his election as a member of the same body to fill
the unexpired term of Senator David Boucher,
who had died in September, 1872, the latter's
district covering Butte, Plumas and Lassen
counties. His record in the state senate was
•creditable to the state of California, as well as
to himself. The encomiums of praise which arose
as the result of his faithful public service came
alike from Democratic and Republican sources,
all agreeing that his liberal ideas, business-like
methods and independent thinking, wherein was
found no trace of self-seeking, made him an ideal
public servant.

One of the greatest honors which can fall to
an American citizen is to preside over the affairs
of a sovereign state as its chief executive. This
honor came to Mr. Perkins in 1879, when he
was elected governor of California, having a
plurality of more than twenty-two thousand
votes over each of his opponents, a record un-
paralleled in the history of California politics.
In his inaugural address his remarks were first

directed toward agricultural and mining indus-
tries, but a later and no less important topic was
mentioned when the prison-labor question was
under consideration. Under the oi l constitution
the contracting for state prison labor was to
cease January 1, 1882, but through the recom-
mendation and efforts of Mr. Perkins was estab-
lished one of the most important industries car-
ried on in any penal institution in the state,
namely, the great jute bag manufacturing indus-
try at San Quentin. During his career as chief
executive of the state he saw many measures
spring up and bear rich and wholesome fruit,
but in none of them did he take more pride than
in the fact that during his administration the state
prisons had become practically self-sup|x>rting
The jute mill established at San Quentin and the
granite quarry at Folsom were successful, and
the grain sack manufactured at San Quentin
was superior to those imported. During his ad-
ministration many public buildings were erected,
among them being the normal schools at San
Jose and Los Angeles, besides additions to the
State University, the insane asylums at Stockton
and Napa, and the institutions for the care of the
deaf and dumb and blind at Berkeley. If there
was any cause for doubt as to the policy pursued
by Mr. Perkins during his administration, time
and subsequent events in the history of the state
have demonstrated that the many new questions
to be considered by the adoption of a new con-
stitution (which went into effect in 1880L with
its many radical changes were successfully piloted
over a rough sea beset with many dangers to
the ship of state. In 1886 he was one of the
Republican candidates for United States senator,
and although he received a large vote, the choice
fell to Leland Stanford. In the first year of
Mr. Stanford's second term Mr. Perkins was
appointed (July 24. 1893^ to ^ tnc vacancy
caused by the death of the former, taking his
seat in the United States senate on the eighth
day of August in the same year. In January.
1895. he was elected by the state legislature on
the first ballot to fill the unexpired term, dis-
charging his duties for nearly two \ear* before
he became a regular candidate for the ensuing
long term of senator. Tn the fall of i8*x>. i~ a

306

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

candidate, he received endorsement from Repub-
lican county conventions comprising a majority
of the senatorial and assembly districts of the
state, and in January, 1897, was re-elected by the
legislature on the first ballot. A re-election fol-
lowed in 1903, his popularity being tested by re-
ceiving every vote of the Republican members
of the legislature, while his election was made
unanimous upon a motion from a Democratic
member. At the time of his election, both in
1897 and in 1903, he was absent from the state,
attending to congressional duties in Washing-
ton, D. C. Senator Perkins is chairman of the
committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment,
chairman of the sub-committee on Fortifications
and Coast Defense, and high in rank on the fol-
lowing important committees : General Appro-
priations, Agriculture and Forestry, Commerce,
Fisheries, Forest Reservations and the Protection
of Game, and he is ranking member of the com-
mittee on Naval Affairs.

If one characteristic more than another is
prominent in the makeup of Senator Perkins it
is the altruistic spirit which he shows in whatever
he undertakes to do. Many there are to-day who
can rise up and call him blessed for the words
of encouragement and good cheer, to say noth-
ing of financial assistance, which have been be-
stowed at the critical moment, when hope had
fled and life seemed not worth the living. Peo-
ple of wealth were aroused from their inertia by
his stirring lectures in behalf of the churches
and benevolent institutions during the course of
his official career, and in his private life the cause
of charity and philanthropy have in him one of
their stanchest allies. He has been president of
the Boys and Girls' Aid Society of San Fran-
cisco since 1882, in which he is an enthusiastic
worker in retrieving young boys and girls from
lives of crime and degradation toward which
they have taken the first step. During its exist-
ence the society has found homes for more than
7,000 neglected, abused, or homeless boys, ninety-
five per cent of whom are now good citizens.
Other benevolent interests with which he is iden-
tified include the Ladies' Relief Society of Oak-
land, kindergarten schools, boards of Masonic
relief, the Old Ladies' Home, the Young Men's

Christian Associations and the Seamen's Bethels,
toward all of which he contributes freely of his
means, and, what is better still, bestows his per-
sonal labor unstintingly. Mr. Perkins con-
tributes to churches of all denominations, and is
a believer in a thoroughly practical religion, that
practices the Golden Rule as well as preaches it.

During his term as governor he pardoned and
commuted the sentences of more prisoners than
any other governor of the state, but in no in-
stance did he act until he had personally inter-
viewed the prisoner, and had learned the story of
his life and investigated the facts in the case
which resulted in his conviction. If convinced
that the ends of justice had been subserved by
the punishment the prisoner had received, and,
if released, he would live a good life, he did not
hesitate to grant executive clemency. That he
did not abuse the great power which for the time
was vested in him, is evidenced by the fact that
only one of the many who received executive
clemency at his hands was ever returned to
prison charged with a penal offense, and he
stated to the judge before whom he was tried,
that he would plead guilty to the charge under
an assumed name if he would not let Governor
Perkins know that he was the man whose sen-
tence he had commuted, and who had promised
him he would in the future live an honest life,
stating that this he had done for eight years and
would have continued until the end had it not
been for bad associates and strong drink.

In Oroville, Cal., in 1864, Mr. Perkins was
united in marriage with Miss Ruth A. Parker,
a native of Cork, and the daughter of an English
officer in the excise service. Four daughters
and three sons blessed the union of Mr. and Mrs.
Perkins.

It was while living in Oroville that Mr. Per-
kins united with the Masonic order. In the blue
lodge he served in nearly all the offices from
junior deacon to master, later was elected to
some of the highest offices of the grand lodge of
the state and was chosen most worshipful grand
master of the grand lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons of California. While the grand conclave
of 1883 was in session he was elected grand com-
mander of the Grand Commandery of Knights

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Templar of the state of California. He was also
elected junior grand warden of the Grand En-
campment,' Knights Templar of the United
States. He is also a member of the military order
of the Loyal Legion of the United States (Cali-
fornia Commandery), his election being a recog-
nition of services rendered during the war.

The home of Mr. Perkins is located at Vernon
Heights, in Oakland, where he is surrounded by
all that comfort can suggest, tempered with a
characteristic simplicity. Those who know him
best, the representatives of the younger gener-
ation as well as those who, like him, have spent
many years in useful operations in California,
freely accord him a place among the public-
spirited and kind hearted citizens of the state ;
and in him they find a man whose support of all
worthy movements calculated to enhance the
commercial, industrial and social standing of the
commonwealth comes from entirely unselfish
motrves. That he is one of the public-spirited
citizens of the Pacific coast is a fitting tribute to
his indefatigable industry and perseverance.
These characteristics have made his life what it
has been — reflecting credit upon himself, and a
source of inspiration to those young men of the
present generation whose only hope of reward
may be found in doing what lies before them in
the line of duty, with a firm determination to
adhere to a policy of integrity, application and
perseverance.

JEFFERSON T. DILLE.

A citizen of prominence and a successful busi-
ness man, Jefferson T. Dille has been a resident
of California for almost forty years, and during
this time has succeeded in building up for him-
self a substantial competence and at the same
time has established himself in a position of re-
spect among the citizens of the Pacific coast. Mr.
Dille is descended from a family originally
French, the emigrating ancestor locating in Lon-
don, England, and later generations sought a
home in America. Mr. Dille's father, Jacob S.,

was born in Belmont county, Ohio, while the
mother was born in Center county, Pa. The
family located in Cleveland, Ohio, when that now
prosperous city was a small village surrounded by
the thick forests of the northwest territory. The
elder man engaged throughout his entire active
life as a farmer and acquired substantial means.

Jefferson T. Dille was born in Cleveland, Ohio,
December 20, 183 1, and in its common and high
schools received1 a substantial education. Upon
the completion of his education he learned the
trade of carpenter, after which he worked as a
journeyman for some years in his native city.
From Cleveland he went to St. Louis, Mo., and
was there employed on a Mississippi steamboat
plying between St. Louis and St. Paul, in the
capacity of steamboat carpenter, retaining tlii^
position from 1856 to 1858. Upon leaving tin-
employ of this company he went to New Orle.m-
and there worked at his trade for a time, then
returned to Cleveland and followed the same
occupation. This he later gave up to engage in
the real estate business, the rapid advance in th<-
value of realty bringing him large returns f < »r
the time he devoted his attention to this work.
In March, 1869, Mr. Dille first came to Call
fornia by the Isthmus of Panama, remaining for
a time in San Francisco. Soon after his arrival
he located in Oakland, where he has since made
his home, engaging actively in the real estate and
building business and personally investing heav-
ily in Oakland property, thus manifesting his
faith in the future of the city. That his faith
was fully justified was evidenced by the fact that
in the summer of IQ07 he sold several of his prop-
erties for many times the original price of the
land. He also owns other and improved property
in Berkeley and Oakland, which brings him a
comfortable income.

Mr. Dille was married in Cleveland, Ohio.
April 28, 1858. to Miss Mary Franciso>. a native
of New York, and daughter of Henry Francisco.
They became the parents of the following chil-
dren : George and Sadie, decease I : Clinton
F., of Los Angeles; Arthur M.. of Tucson.
Ariz. : Alice M.. wife of E. A. Steiningcr of Palo
Alto : and Helen, at home. The last-mentioned
is a native of Oakland, while the other children

310

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

were born in Cleveland, Ohio. In politics
Mr. Dille is a stanch advocate of Repub-
lican principles, although personally he has
never cared for official recognition. He is now in
his seventy-seventh year, enjoying good health,
retaining his faculties, and manifesting the keen-
est interest on all questions of contemporary in-
terest and keeping thoroughly in touch with cur-
rent events. He has had much leisure during his
life-time, which he has spent in deep reading and
study, his favorite subjects being history and
philosophy. He is a man of unusual independ-
ence in both thought and action. He has been
successful in his business affairs and in this has
retained his self respect and the respect and
esteem of those with whom he has come in con-
tact, his integrity being absolutely unquestioned.

FRANK W. BILGER.

The work of Frank W. Bilger is making a
strong impress upon the trend of events in Oak-
land, and as a citizen of worth and ability, ener-
gy and enterprise, he is entitled to a place among
her representative men. Mr. Bilger is a native
of the Pacific Coast country, his birth having
occurred in Oregon in 1868. Six years later he
was brought to California by his parents, and in
the public schools of Alameda county he re-
ceived his preliminary education, after which he
entered the University of California and gradu-
ated from the department of pharmacy in 1889.
Although educated for this line of work he re-
mained in it only a comparatively short time un-
til lie engaged in his present business, which pre-
sented to him an interest and attraction which
can be explained by the fact that his paternal
grandfather operated sandstone quarries in Ger-
many years ago, and was well known there by the
vast amount of public construction work that he
1 lid in certain sections of the empire. Mr. Bilger
is associated with two companies in this line of
work. The Oakland Paving Company and the
Blake & Bilger Company, being secretary and

treasurer and one of the main owners of both,
and an important factor in the large amount of
work they have done for public and private in-
dividuals. With truth he may be called the
pioneer road builder of Oakland and vicinity,
and in the early days was associated with such
men as C. H. T. Palmer (the man who drafted
the good-roads bill known as the Vrooman act),
Charles T. Blake, Moses H. Eastman, Charles D.
Bates and others, all of whom are now deceased,
the business now being carried on by younger
men. Mr. Bilger has given his attention almost
wholly to the development of good roads, and as
the years pass we find him relinquishing other in-
terests to a great extent to center his mind on
one of the most important topics to the people of
California.

Mr. Bilger is interested in the formation of,
and friendly to the movement to organize, a city
and county government which shall do away
with the present dual form of government. All
public movements that have for their end the bet-
terment of conditions in general and the develop-
ment of the state's resources, and especially clean
business legislation, find in him an ardent sup-
porter. He is president of the Harbor Bank and
was the second president of the Oakland Cham-
ber of Commerce, while politically he has proven
an important factor in Republican affairs, serving
as chairman of the Republican city central commit-
tee and seeking the advancement of the princi-
ples he endorses. Fraternally he is a prominent
Mason, belonging to Live Oak Lodge No. 61,
F. & A. M., Oakland Chapter No. 36, R. A. M.,
Oakland Commandery No. 11, K. T., and Islam
Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., while he is also a
member of the Woodmen of the World, the Be-
nevolent Protective Order of Elks, the Nile Club,
the Deutscher Club, and member and vice-presi-
dent of the Athenian Club.

Bv his marriage with Miss Carrie Siebe, Mr.
Bilger united his fortunes with another promi-
nent family of California, three brothers, George,
John D. and Frederick C, all being prominent
in public affairs in San Francisco, the first named,
father of Mrs. Bilger, being in the custom house,
the second brother assessor of San Francisco for
six years, and the last one a police commissioner

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

:n:;

for many years. Mr. and Mrs. Bilger became
the parents of the following children : Anson
S., Marion A., William F. and Frank W., Jr.
In 1893 Mr. Bilger was a member of the board
of trustees of San Leandro and an upbuilder of
the town. He was very prominent both individ-
ually and as a member of the Oakland Chamber
of Commerce in the relief work following the
San Francisco disaster, winning high encomiums
both for his consideration and kindness and the
judgment with which the work was managed.
Mr. Bilger expects to continue in street con-
struction work as his life vocation, devoting his
time to the improvement of the highways and
keeping abreast of the latest methods in use, and
with the ability and energy already demonstrated
he cannot fail to continue the success already be-
gun, and at the same time that he is thus en-
gaged establish for himself, through the proper
use of his talents as a citizen, a high place among
the representative men of the bay cities of Cali-
fornia.

GEORGE H. VOSE.

Among the prominent pioneer citizens and up-
builders of this great western statehood, mention
is made of the late George H. Vose of Oakland.
He was born in Augusta, Me., March 19, 1829.
He traced his lineage to some of the most re-
nowned men in United States history, being a
second cousin of James A. Garfield, related to
Gen. Edwin A^ose Sumner, and third cousin of
Chief Justice Fuller. He inherited the qualities
of the eastern colonist, for his ancestry on
American soil antedates the Revolutionary war.
Robert Vose, the immigrant of the family, came
from England in 1634, located in Massachusetts,
and became a prominent factor in the develop-
ment of the colonv. The first church in Milton,
Mass., was erected on land donated by him for
that purpose, and he assisted materially in other
ways toward the general upbuilding of the coun-
try. Down to the present generation there have
been at least two of the Vose family serving in

each war of the United States, beginning in
colonial days with King Philip's war, and ending
with the Spanish-American.

Mr. Vose graduated from Bowdoin College
at the age of twenty years, in a class that count-
ed such men as United States Senators Frve and
Lodge of Maine, and Gen. O. O. Howard. Mr.
Vose had a brother, R. C. Vose, who was cap-
tain of the First California Cavalry during the
Civil war. His father was R. C. Vose, who was
adjutant-general of the state of Maine. Me died
in 1842, when the son was thirteen years of age.

In 1849, immediately after leaving college, Mr.
Vose came to California by way of Cape Horn.
That year was one of great excitement, engen-
dered by the tales of fabulous fortunes made in
the California gold mines; but Mr. Vose did not
seek the Eldorado — he saw the opportunity for
rich agricultural development rather than the
precarious business of mining. In consequence
he turned his attention to tilling the soil. I [e
made his home in Oakland and at once took up
his vocation. Ten years later he went to Sacra-
mento and there managed a large transfer and
teaming business for some years. While in that
city he served as captain of the Home Guard, the
first military organization in California. Return-
ing to Oakland he remained for five years, then
went to San Lorenzo and once more took up
ranching, following this until his permanent re-
tirement from business activity, at which time
he again located in Oakland and lived quietly in
the enjoyment of the fruits of his early lal>«rs.
until his death, February 22. 1908. He ran the
first dairy in Alameda county, was one of the
first three men to raise tomatoes in this state on
a large scale (that product being then practically
unknown) and was one of the first asparagus
growers, having land adapted for that vegetable,
as the San Lorenzo creek, running through the
center of his ranch, overflowed and inundated
and renewed that ground. He shipped annually
into the San Francisco and Oakland markets
thousands of sacks of jx>tatoes. which were known
for their fine quality as the "Vose" potato, and
found ready market at advanced prices.

Mr. Vose was a man who looked upon the
bright side of life, and when he failed in any un-

314

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

dertaking it only gave him renewed vigor to per-
severe and conquer. He was a quiet, reserved,
polished gentleman, always ready to aid those
less fortunate than himself. He never sought
any prominence in public life, though his influ-
ence was always exerted for the right. He was
a man who counted his friends by the score and
in his business dealings he was fair and never
took undue advantage of another.

The marriage of Mr. Vose united him with
Sarah H. La Rose, of French Huguenot stock, a
daughter of Laceis and Sarah J. La Rose. Mrs.
Vose boasted of a fine ancestry, being a descend-
ant of those who came to America to escape re-
ligious persecution. To Mr. and Mrs. Vose
seven children were born, six of whom are liv-
ing, viz.: Mrs. Mary V. Baker, Rufus C, Mrs.
Bertha La Rose Hanford, George H. Vose, Jr.,
a twin, and Frank B., and Charles Stanford.
Ali are now in Oakland, where they were reared
and educated. Mr. Vose was eligible to mem-
bership in the Massachusetts Society of the Cin-
cinnati, a society founded by General Washing-
ton for the officers of the Revolution, and to be
handed down to their eldest sons in direct line
of descent. This is one of the most exclusive
organizations in our country. Many relics of
pioneer days, as well as heirlooms, were left by
the father, and some are now in the possession
of George H. Vose, Jr., including a colonial
clock.

George H. Vose, Jr., was born in San Lo-
renzo August 23, 1869, and there received his
early education, after which he attended Heald's
Business College of San Francisco and was
graduated in 1887. He remained at home assist-
ing with ranching until attaining the age of
twenty years, when the family became perma-
nently located in Oakland. His first independent
work in life was in the employ of Tillman &
Bendei, a grocery firm in San Francisco. He
remained with them for one year, then enlisted
in the volunteers for service in the Spanish-
American war, passing eighteen months in the
Philippine islands as a soldier in the Eighth
California Regiment. Returning to Oakland at
the close of the war, he established a real estate
enterprise in tbe city, which since that time has

occupied his attention. He has been very suc-
cessful and his work has proven an important
factor in the development of the city's best in-
terests. He is president of the Standard Ware-
house Company of Oakland, a concern which he
organized, and through his personal influence
and that of his company, he has secured for Oak-
land her first bonded warehouse at Fifth and
Poplar streets, which obviates the necessity of
the merchants going to San Francisco as they
have formerly been doing. He is prominent in
various social, fraternal and civic societies, among
them being Sons of the American Revolution,
Junior Order of the United American Mechanics
and Chamber of Commerce. He also is connected
with the banking interests of Oakland as a stock-
holder. He is always to be found on the side of
right and order and the advancement of the best
interests of the community.

Through his marriage with Miss Helen I. De
la Montanya, Mr. Vose has allied his fortunes
with those of another old and prominent family
of our country (see biography of Mr. De la
Montanya). She is a member of the Daughters
of the Revolution and a woman of culture and
refinement. Mr. and Mrs. Vose are the parents
of one son, George Howe Vose, the third to
bear the name in California.

PHILIP M. CAREY.

Personal qualifications of a superior order com-
bined with thorough training for his profession
have made the name of Philip M. Carey well
known in legal circles, and as deputy district
attorney of Alameda county he is thoroughly ful-
filling the duties of the position to which he was
appointed in April, 1907. A native Calif ornian,
he was born in Merced, November 11, 1879, of
Irish parentage. He passed the days of his boy-
hood and youth in Mariposa and Madera coun-
ties, attending the grammar school of Madera ;
later he entered the Oakland high school. In the
latter institution he prepared to enter the State

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

317

University of California, from which, in May,
1904, he graduated with the degree of Bachelor
of Laws.

The later years of his student life Mr. Carey
had spent in preparation for the legal profession,
and on December 19, 1905, his efforts were re-
warded by his admission to the bar before the
appellate court of the First District of San Fran-
cisco. Soon afterward he entered the office of
H. H. Johnson, town attorney of Berkeley, who,
it may here be mentioned, was killed in an auto-
mobile accident in England in 1907. In April,
1907, Mr. Carey was appointed deputy district
attorney of Alameda county by Hon. Everett J.
Brown, in which position he has proven him-
self an efficient officer.

In his political leanings Mr. Carey is a pro-
nounced Republican and for some time served as
a member of the Republican City Central Com-
mittee of Berkeley. Fraternally he holds mem-
bership in Berkeley Lodge No. 1002, B. R O. E.,
also in Berkeley Parlor No. 210, N. S. G. W.
Personally Mr. Carey is a man of genial disposi-
tion, broad in his outlook on life, and one whom
it is a pleasure to meet on all occasions.

PETER THOMSON.

Peter Thomson was born at Milnathort, Kin-
ross-shire. Scotland, November 25, 1824, the
youngest of a family of six sons and two daugh-
ters of Peter and Catherine (Beveridge) Thom-
son, who came from a sturdy and devout ances-
try, the father being a well-to-do farmer. Los-
ing his mother in early youth, Peter Thomson
left school at the age of thirteen years and was
apprenticed by his father to learn the mercantile
business with prominent drapery firms in Edin-
burgh, London and Dublin. In the spring of
1845 he started for the United States, coming to
New York City, where he made a short stay with
friends, as he was on his way to enter into part-
nership with his brother, John Thomson, in De-
troit, Mich., who had begun in the grocery busi-

ness there some years previously. Not taking
kindly after a six months' trial to this new line
of duty, he returned to New York City, where he
accepted a clerkship in a prominent dry goods
house to see how he would like New York as a
place of business. He returned to Edinburgh
early in 1847, and commenced business witli bifl
brother, Thomas Thomson, at Xo. 135 Prince*
street, and both being industrious and attentive
to their work, soon built up a flourishing trade.
In 1852 they dissolved partnership, as his broth-
er declined to come to San Francisco and repeat
the Edinburgh success in business.

August 18, 1852, in New York City. Mr.
Thomson was married to Miss Sarah Maria Fa\.
In October of the same year they proceeded by
the Isthmus of Panama with a party of fifteen
relatives and friends to San Francisco, arriving
a few days after the great fire which devastated
Sacramento. He took a clerkship for a few
months in a prominent French dry goods house
in San Francisco, until the arrival of the ship-
ment of goods around Cape Horn from Edin-
burgh, Scotland, with which he commenced busi-
ness on Sacramento street. The following year
he changed the business to that of men's furnish-
ing goods only, which was the first of its kind
here, becoming in time one of the leading mer-
chants of the kind, carrying on a large trade on
the Pacific coast, where he became favorably
known as an importer of foreign and domestic
men's furnishing goods. In 1867 he retired
from business because of asthma, from which he
was a great sufferer thirty-five years prior to his
death. During his business career he invested
in realty in San Francisco and Oakland, also in
mining interests in N'evada, Mexico and Cali-
fornia. Early in 1853 he had a picturesque home
built on Union, between Taylor and Jones streets,
being the second to choose that location with it-
unrivaled magnificent marine view of the San
Francisco bay and charming surroundings. In
the spring of 1863 he invested in Oakland realty
for a home at Telegraph avenue and Thirty-sixth
street, had seven acres laid out in driveways and
walks, planted with ornamental trees and shrub-
bery, and later on' built a handsome home sur-
rounded by extensive lawns and flowers, which

318

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

was afterward sold to Mr. Reagan of "Silver
King" fame, whose widow disposed of it to the
state of California, and which is now occupied by
the adult blind as a home.

After retiring from business Mr. Thomson in-
vested largely in Oakland realty, taking an active
interest in improving his holdings. Lie aided in
organizing the St. Andrew's Benevolent So-
cieties in San Francisco and Oakland, being first
treasurer of the San Francisco society, and presi-
dent of the Oakland society for some time, after
which he was made honorary president. He came
from a musically inclined family and was a good
flute plaver. playing only for home entertain-
ments, however. With other progressive men
he helped to organize the California Hosiery
Company of Oakland, being its president and a
director for years. The company carried on an
extensive business in its day throughout the Pa-
cific slope and territories, as far east as Chicago,
and only ceased operations when the Interstate
Commerce bill took effect which destroyed its
business beyond California on account of exces-
sive freight rates. The goods manufactured by
the mill were well and favorably known, and the
mills gave employment to a large number of will-
ing and deserving workers. Mr. Thomson be-
lieved in good, economical, honest government,
and with that belief allowed himself to become a
candidate for councilman from his ward. He
was nominated and elected by both parties, Re-
publican and Democratic, for the term 1881 and
1882. He voted to dismiss the famous water
front suit, owing to the useless expenditure of
public funds, by the advice of his attorneys, this
suit already having cost the city a large amount
of money. He was a stanch Republican in poli-
tics. For thirteen years he was an active mem-
ber of the board of trustees of the Mountain View
Cemetery Association of Oakland, and in that
capacity gave his time and sound judgment in
the administration of the affairs of the associa-
tion, and by his affable and courteous manner
in discharge of duties assigned him, won the es-
teem of his fellow associates. He was a man of
sterling character, honest through his entire
career, true, conscientious, kind, generous and
charitable, of broad Christian principles, quiet.

unassuming and of a refined taste and well in-
formed. Lie had traveled extensively in Europe
and the United States with his family, to whom
he was devotedly attached. He was a member
of Calvary Presbyterian church in San Fran-
cisco while residing there, and later on was a
member of the First Presbyterian church in Oak-
land. He was never a member of any secret
organization. He passed to his reward in Oak-
land August 9, 1901, and was interred in Moun-
tain View Cemetery.

Mr. Thomson was survived by his devoted
wife and three children, Lucy Fay, William Ed-
ward and David Peter, a daughter, Catherine
Beveridge, having died in childhood. William
E. Thomson was for years with Dunham-Carri-
gan Company, San Francisco hardware, iron and
steel importers and dealers, and was later asso-
ciated with his father in business, while David
P. Thomson is adjusting superintendent of the
General Electric Company at Schenectady, N. Y.,
having been connected with that company
for more than eighteen years. Mrs. Thom-
son in maidenhood was Sarah Maria Fay, and
came from distinguished N'ew England and Vir-
ginia ancestry. She was the youngest of five
daughters of Edward and Priscilla (Price) Fay,
and was born at Albany, N. Y., and with her sis-
ters was educated at Rutgers' Academy at that
place. Her father was a manufacturer of fire-
arms at Albany, his active career being cut off at
the age of forty-one years by cholera. Her
mother accompanied her daughter and son-in-
law to California and died of typhoid fever short-
ly after her arrival in Sacramento, during the
great flood which soon followed the fire. Her
remains were taken out of a second story win-
dow and conveyed by rowboat during a terrible
storm to the cemetery. Mrs. Thomson was a
noble, gemle, refined Christian woman of high
ideals and principles, generous and charitable;
of domestic tastes, a stanch believer in the Bible,
which was her constant companion through the
many years of her useful life. With her hus-
band she was a member of Calvary Presbyterian
church while in San Francisco, and was later
identified with the First Presbyterian church in

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Oakland. She died May 5, 1903, and is buried
beside her life companion in Mountain View
Cemetery.

ENOCH HOMER PARDEE., M. D.

Remembered as one of the upbuilding citizens
of Oakland is Enoch Homer Pardee, who came
as a pioneer to the state of California and passed
the best years of his manhood in the professional
and municipal life of this city. He was a native
of the city of Rochester, N. Y., born April 1,
1829; his father was the descendant of French
Huguenot stock, the emigrating ancestor being
George (or Georges) Pardee, who landed in the
Connecticut colony in 1715. Some of the early
members of the family spelled the name Pardie
and others wrote it Pardy, the family genealogist
giving the explanation that the original form was
Pardieu. In the Revolutionary war the Pardees
gave valiant service, no less than twenty-nine of
them serving in the ranks of the Connecticut vol-
unteers. During the era of westward expansion
which followed close upon the achievement of in-
dependence, representatives of the family migra-
ted to New York and Ohio, and the name is now
common in several of the western states.

Enoch H. Pardee was taken by his parents to
Michigan when about seven years old, and there
he received his rudimentary education. When
fifteen years old he was seized with a disease of
the eyes known as Egyptian ophthalmia, and
after consulting the chief medical skill of the
principal eastern cities he was finally cured by
Dr. Bigelow, of Detroit. After recovering his
sight he entered upon a course of study with
Dr. Bigelow, and obtained the secret of his treat-
ment, after which he entered Ann Arbor Univer-
sity, in Michigan, and completed a regular course
of lectures in medicine. In 1849 ne came to Cali-
fornia by way of the Isthmus of Panama, stopped
at San Diego for a short time, and on the 6th of
January, 1850, arrived in San Francisco. He
went at once to Marysville, but instead of work-
ing in the mines he acted as auctioneer and was

paid an "ounce" a day for his services. Later
he engaged in mining and was very successful,
and also found employment at his profession upon
the breaking out of cholera, although the dread
disease also attached him. About February, 1851,
he returned to San Francisco with a capital of
from $12,000 to $15,000, and after some inde-
cision decided to open an office in San Francisco
and begin the practice of his profession. He es-
tablished his office in Brenham place, on the
Plaza, and there practiced medicine until burned
out, when he moved to No. 737 Clay street, where
he continued to treat patients successfully for
twenty years. Ill health after a time caused him
to confine his practice altogether to diseases of the
eye and ear, in which he met with more than
usual success. In the meantime, in 1865, he had
returned east and graduated from Rush Medical
College in Chicago, having left his business in
charge of a son of Dr. Bigelow. After an ab-
sence of two years he returned to San Francisco
and continued his work.

Dr. Pardee first visited Oakland in 1852, when
he hunted quail and rabbits, and finally made this
place his home in 1867. He became prominent
in public affairs and after holding various posi-
tions of trust and responsibility was elected a
member of the city council in 1869, re-elected in
1870, 1 87 1, 1872, and in 1876 was placed in the
honorable position of mayor of the city. He was
always an ardent Republican in politics, having
attended the very first meeting of that party or-
ganized in San Francisco. In Oakland he was
from the first a leading man in the councils of his
party, and was elected to the state legislature a>
joint assemblyman with Mr. Crane, in 1872. serv-
ing with credit to himself and satisfaction to his
constituents. There was no more popular mem-
ber in the house to which he belonged, his rrcnial
manners and fund of anecdote, as well as his prac-
tical ability, having made him a general favorite.
Several important local measures were passed
through his exertions, and he received an ovation
from his fellow citizens on his return home. In
addition to his political and professional labors the
doctor also engaged in a liberal dealing in mininjj
stocks, and was uniformly successful.

The marriage of Dr. Pardee occurred in 1855.

320

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

and united him with a young lady of his own
name, she, too, being a descendant of the origi-
nal Pardee family in America. They became the
parents of one son, George C. Pardee, who fol-
lowed in the footsteps of his father to the mayor-
alty of the city of Oakland, and was afterward
honored with the governorship of the state of
California. For complete details concerning his
life refer to the following sketch. Dr. Pardee,
the elder, passed away September 24, 1896, after
such a life of usefulness as endeared him to the
entire population of the city and section, his
name goingf down in the annals of the state as
that of an upbuilder in the pioneer days of Cali-
fornia.

HON. GEORGE C. PARDEE.

An encomium upon the life and services of
Hon. George C. Pardee is not needed in a volume
presenting the representative citizens of Oakland,
and indeed of the state of California, both of the
past and present, for wherever the name is known
it is honored as that of one of the forceful men
of the younger generation who has made the ac-
complishment of his efforts the bulwark of our
western statehood. The double honor of being
the son of a pioneer and a native son of Cali-
fornia belongs to Dr. Pardee, for his father, the
first Dr. Pardee of California fame, gave the
strength of his manhood's prime toward the up-
building and development of the state. For com-
plete details concerning his life and the ancestry
of the Pardee family refer to his personal biog-
raphy.

George C. Pardee was born in San Francisco,
July 25, 1857, and received his primary education
in the old City College, and later attended Mc-
Qure's Academy and the college school of Oak-
land, whither his parents removed in 1867. Sub-
sequently he took a three years' course in the
Oakland high school, after which he became a
student in the University of California, first en-
tering the fifth class, which was then, and for

some time afterward, maintained as a useful ad-
junct to the new institution of learning. His reg-
ular university course was taken during the
years 1875 to 1879. The class which has given
the state a governor, a justice of the supreme
court, a professor in the university and other
more or less distingushed citizens, was much more
numerous than any that had entered up to that
time, and it was some years before any other of
equal numbers followed it. Its members felt very
proud when they graduated sixty-eight out of
one hundred and fifty-nine who entered. It was
a class which carried everything before it from
the outset, for the seniors, juniors and sopho-
mores were so much weaker in numbers that it
was hardly worth while for them to attempt to
withstand '79. In those days baseball was the
principal athletic sport of the university, and in
this young" Pardee excelled, retaining to the pres-
ent day a fondness for the game. Charter day
and class day were then celebrated with as much
spirit as they are to-day, and in all of these di-
versions from the regular line of work he was
ever found ready to take a part. Professional
study in Europe was one of the objects which
he had long had in mind, and after two years of
preliminary work in Cooper College he went to
Germany and entered the University of Leipzig,
from which he was graduated after three years.
And not alone was this beneficial from a profes-
sional standpoint, but it served to give him a
broader view of the world, a more complete un-
derstanding of human nature, and in diverse ways
fitted him for the important positions he was
afterward called upon to fill.

Returning to his home in 1885, Dr. Pardee be-
gan the practice of his profession in San Fran-
cisco and Oakland, married and established a
home. It was not over two years, however, be-
fore he found himself interested in the political
life of the community, manifesting the ability
which was his both by inheritance and training
in his association with municipal affairs. In a
short time he became a member of the Oakland
city board of health and made a strenuous cam-
paign for purification of the water supply. A
popular demand was thus created that he should
be a councilman, and in this capacity he in no-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

wise lost the high regard in which he had come
to be held. The highest office in the gift of the
municipality was next his, and he entered upon
the duties of mayor under discouraging labor
conditions, which, however, he managed to sur-
mount with credit to himself and satisfaction to
those who had entrusted him with the city's af-
fairs, and upon again retiring to private life car-
ried with him the increased regard of the public.
This was manifested in 1898 when he was chosen
candidate for the office of governor of California,
and although defeated at the election that fol-
lowed, so favorable was the impression he had
made upon the party politicians that success was
assured four years later. His term of office is
now ended and he has again retired to private
life, and to his credit it can again be said that
he has carried with him the sincere admiration
and regard of those who advocated his public ser-
vice, and indeed of those who opposed him, both
realizing the stanch integrity which characterized
all his dealings, whether in public or private life.

WILLIAM WATRUS CRANE.

As a pioneer of the state of California and one
of its most stanch upbuilders, William Watrus
Crane is remembered among the early residents
of Oakland, and his name placed among the citi-
zens who wrought this western commonwealth.
Mr. Crane was a native of New York City, and
was born September 16, 1831 ; his parents were
William W. and Nancy (McAlpin) Crane, the
mother being a descendant of the Campbells of
Argyle, Scotland, where her own birth occurred.
She was the recipient of a fine education, learn-
ing under the instruction of her father, who was
a literary critic of great ability. She, too, be-
came a writer in womanhood.

William Watrus Crane received his education
in the public schools of New York City, after
which he attended Columbia College and took
up the study of law. Admitted to the bar in his
native state, he remained there until 1854, when
he emigrated to California and here began the
practice of his profession. He rose to a high
20

position among the citizens of the state, and in
1862 was elected to the state senate, where he did
effective work for his constituency ; he was of-
fered the nomination for the governorship of the
state on several different occasions, but because
of physical indisposition declined the honor. He
also declined the offer of a judgeship which was
thrice made him, preferring his general practice.
A man of honest purpose and consistency, of ster-
ling traits of character which won him main
friends, and of an undoubted ability in his line
of work, it is not a matter of surprise that he won
a prominent place in the citizenship of the state.
Added to his other work he was a writer of con-
siderable ability, both of prose and verse, at one
time compiling his poems for publication, in the
course of which they were destroyed. This had
been a labor entirely for his own pleasure and
that of his friends and not for pecuniary profit, as
was the greater part of his writings, which wen-
very prolific. He was socially inclined, and for
years was a member of both the Bohemian and
the University Clubs, in which he took an active
part. His death occurred July 31, 1883.

In 1874 Mr. Crane had built his beautiful home
at the corner of Tenth and Market streets, in
Oakland, and here his widow still resides. She
was before marriage Miss Hannah Austin, a
daughter of David and Nancy (Burton) Austin.
She was orphaned at an early age and alone -he
came to California by way of the Isthmus of
Panama in 1852. In November. 1856, in San
Francisco, she became the wife of Mr. Crane.
By this union were born three children, of whom
two died in infancy, the remaining daughter.
Mary Nancy, marrying H. P. Hussey. and be-
coming the mother of two children. Evelyn and
Austin Crane. Mrs. Crane is one of the pioneer
women of Oakland and is widely known and
highly honored throughout this section of the
state.

JOHN CALVIN GAMBLE.

On a farm in Allegheny county. Pa.. John C.
Gamble was born Octoher j. 1820. a son of John
and Martha (Marks) Gamble, both parents na-

324

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

tives of County Antrim, Ireland. Through his
mother, who was in maidenhood Jean Gilmour,
the father could trace his descent to the Craw-
ford and Lindsey families of Scotland, and
through them to Sir Robert Bruce. In 1797,
when eighteen years of age, John Gamble immi-
grated to America on the brig Sally, landing at
Charleston, S. C, after a six-weeks voyage.
On coming ashore at the wharf he saw Gen.
Francis Marion of Revolutionary fame. After
a stay of a year in South Carolina he went to
Newburgh, N. Y., where he engaged in mer-
chandising. Here in 1800 he cast his maiden
vote, which was in favor of Thomas Jefferson,
for whom he always felt the greatest admiration,
and throughout his life he continued stanch in
his adherence to Democratic principles. His last
ballot was cast for James Buchanan. From New-
burgh he went to Pittsburg, Pa., and engaged in
farming until 1812, when he enlisted as a volun-
teer soldier under the command of Gen. William
Henry Harrison. He was with him throughout
his extended campaign and took part in all of
the battles fought under that general, including
those of the Thames and Tippecanoe. Gen.
Lewis Cass was then a colonel in the same com-
mand. With an honorable discharge at the close
of the war he returned to Pittsburg, was there
married, and again took up farm life. There
all of his children were born.

In 1840, with their family, the parents went
west, locating at Connersville, Ind., where they
engaged in stock-raising and farming, and it was
while they were living there that the wife and
mother passed away. In November, 1853, the
father took his family to Warren county, 111. .
and settled near Monmouth. A fine school had
boon established here and this John C. Gamble
attended until he associated himself with an
older brother in the grain and mercantile busi-
ness in the town of Kirkwood. There the death
of the father occurred in March, 1859, at the age
of eighty-three years The Civil war came on and
found John C. Gamble ready to respond to his
country's call for able-bodied men, and he as-
sisted in raising a company of volunteers for the
army. Tn Julv 1862, he enh'sted in Companv C,
Eighty-third Regiment Illinois Infantry, under

command of Col. A. C. Harding, and was made
first lieutenant at its organization. Immediately
afterward the regiment was ordered to Tennessee
and stationed at Fort Donelson until 1863. He
commanded his company in the battle of Fort
Donelson, February 3, 1863, during the attack
of the Confederate forces under Major-General
Wheeler. Following this victory the command
was ordered to Clarksville, Tenn., and it was
while there, by special order from General
Thomas, that three companies of the Eighty-third
Regiment were mounted, armed and equipped
as cavalry. Lieutenant Gamble commanded this
battalion for nearly two years.

On July 29, 1864, while his regiment was at
Clarksville, Tenn., with a detachment of fifteen
men Lieutenant Gamble started with a band of
two hundred head of beef cattle, to be delivered
to the captain of commissaries at Nashville for
the use of the army. The next day, July 30, a
guerrilla band, known as McNary's, suddenly
rushed out of the woods and into the road with
drawn revolvers, capturing Lieutenant Gamble
and four others who were in the rear of the
drove of cattle. Scarcely making a stop the
guerrilla party hurried their victims into the
woods, all carrying their revolvers in hand, ready
to fire if any effort were made by their prisoners
to escape. They soon turned into a by-road lead-
ing to the Cumberland river and there they
robbed the men of their money and valuables,
took the horses thev had been riding and forced
their victims to mount the horses they had used.
All of the rest of the day they traveled, Lieu-
tenant Gamble guarded on each side by an armed
guerrilla, the prisoners not being permitted to
speak to any one. In the evening they came to
a little open space in the woods, and here they
were ordered to dismount and stand up in line
to be "paroled." Thev obeyed. Lieutenant Gam-
ble noted that there was a low bush in front of
where he stood. One of the band said, "We have
but one way of paroling." At that instant came
the command of "fire" from their line, followed
by a scream of "murder" by the prisoners. Lieu-
tenant Gamble sprang through the guerrilla line
amid a vollev of bullets. Reaching a thick-
growth of bushes and small trees he was soon out

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

325

of sight of his pursuers, though the balls from
their revolvers flew around him thickly as he
ran. The growing gloom of the woods aided
to conceal him from their view. Once he fell as
he descended a hill, and he imagined the beat-
ing of his heart was the sound of horses hoofs
approaching. On he went until complete dark-
ness came. With an hour's rest beside a fallen
tree he continued his flight, though the woods
being heavy and dark he made poor headway.
At daybreak he found himself on the bank of
Barton's creek, that flows into the Cumberland
river. A negro boy on horseback came whis-
tling along the road. He halted in a scared way
when Lieutenant Gamble inquired of him if
Union people lived in the house just in sight.
"Yes, Massa Batson lives dar; he's a good Union
man." Some of the family came out to meet the
lieutenant when he reached the place, invited him
into the house to a good breakfast, heard his
story and gave him some needed clothing. The
guerrilla party had taken his uniform and given
him in exchange their old clothes. This was
Sunday morning, and all day he remained in the
barn, being afraid the guerrilla band might come
to the house. In the evening- he got some blank-
ets and went to the near-by woods, and that night
he slept on the ground. During the same night
Mr. Batson rode to Clarksville, carrying the
news of the capture of the men and Lieutenant
Gamble's escape, to the post. On the after-
noon of the next day (Monday) twenty soldiers,
headed by Lieutenant Clark, came, bringing a
horse and clothing for Lieutenant Gamble, and
they all started at once for the spot where the
shooting of the men had taken place. On ar-
riving there they found the dead bodies of the
four prisoners that had stood in line with Lieu-
tenant Gamble. Nothing was now left to do but
to arrange for their hasty burial. Mr. Waller,
a man living two miles from this place, was seen
and he promised to undertake the work im-
mediately and report at Clarksville. Lieutenants
Gamble and Clark with the twenty men now re-
turned to Clarksville, arriving there August 2.
The news of the capture had spread and several
hundred people had gathered there to meet them

and to see the man who had escaped from Mc-
Nary's guerrilla band.

Three days afterward Mr. Waller reported at
the post that he had accomplished the work of
burying the dead. About this time the men who
had been along with the cattle returned to Clarks-
ville. They had kept on their way to Nashville
with the drove and delivered it safely to the
captain of commissaries there, seeing nothing
more of the guerrilla band.

In a month more General Rousseau sent an <>r
der to the commanding offices at Clarksville for
all the forces they could spare to meet General
Wheeler, then advancing on Nashville. Lieu-
tenant Gamble with his battalion was sent, join-
ing the main command under General Rousseau.
They followed Wheeler's army through Ten-
nessee and drove them across the Tennessee
river at Tuscumbia, Ala. Along the way several
battles were fought, among them that of Frank-
lin, Tenn. This accomplished. Lieutenant Gam-
ble and his battalion were ordered hack to Clarks-
ville. On arriving there it was learned that dur-
ing their absence, two of the guerrilla hand that
had shot the four men had themselves been cap-
tured at Cumberland Furnace, seven miles from
the scene of the murder, by the Home Guard-,
and executed, and that all of the remainder of
the band had been overtaken in the woods on the
Cumberland river and captured by a captain of
cavalry with his company from Hopkinsvilk. K\.
The band had with them two prisoners. Dr.
Johnson and his negro boy, whom they were
about to execute. They had forced the doctor to
put on part of the uniform they had taken from
Lieutenant Gamble and were mocking him by
calling him "'lieutenant." The captain set the
doctor and his servant free and took the band t<>
Hopkinsville. where the commander of the post
ordered them to be taken to the woods nearby
and executed. The order was carried out.

Six months after Lieutenant Gamble's return
to Clarksville, with a detachment of his men he
was sent as an escort with a surveying part]
whose route took them to the ground where the
guerrilla band had shot the four men and the
scene of his own escape. A soldier of the party
there found a bullet embedded in an oal

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

which stood twenty feet back of the spot where
Lieutenant Gamble had stood in line with the
other prisoners, and in direct range with his
head. He could locate the spot where he had
stood by the low bush he had noted in front of
him that day. The bullet was secured and it is
still in his possession. The account of his cap-
ture by the guerrilla band and his subsequent
escape was published in the Service Magazine
and in the Louisville Journal when it occurred.
Col. Arthur A. Smith presented Lieutenant
Gamble with a brace of revolvers for meritorious
conduct and bravery.

In July. 1865, at the close of the war, Lieu-
tenant Gamble's regiment was ordered to Nash-
ville, Tenn., where they were mustered out of
service. He then returned to Kirkwood, 111.,
and again engaged in mercantile pursuits until
November, 1869. when he set out for California,
his destination being the Santa Clara valley.
Settling in Gilroy, he there established a mer-
chandising business, later engaging in mercan-
tile pursuits in Santa Rosa and in Humboldt
county.

In 1894 Lieutenant Gamble was appointed by
President Cleveland as registrar of the land office
at Eureka, Cal.. a position which he filled for
nearly five years. Upon leaving it he engaged
in buying and selling redwood timber land in
Humboldt and Del Norte counties, a business in
which he is still interested. In politics he has
been a life-long Democrat and he is now a sup-
porter of Hon. W. J. Bryan. He has been active
in politics and has represented his party in many
conventions, both congressional and state. He
is a member of Appomattox Post, G. A. R., of
Oakland.

In Pennsylvania, July I, 1868, John C. Gamble
was married to Miss Eleanor Wilson, a native
of that state. Of this union three children were
born, of whom the eldest, a daughter, died in
early infancy. The other children, Marian
Stewart and Gertrude Edith, reside at the family
home in Oakland. The former is a graduate of
the University of California, class of 1908. Mrs.
Gamble is the daughter of Rev. Job and Eliza
Frew Wilson. Her father was born in Ennis-
killen, Tre1and; and was a direct descendant of

Hugh Wilson, a native of England and a color-
bearer in Oliver Cromwell's army. He went with
the English forces to Ireland in 1649. When
the war in that country was ended he received
a grant of land at Enniskillen from Sir John
Young, his wife's father, and with his wife and
five sons settled there. This home has been in the
possession of his descendants down to the present
day. Her father immigrated to America about
1823. On the maternal side her great-grand-
father, John Frew, with his wife, Rachel
(Glover) Frew, immigrated to America from
Ireland in 1776 and settled in Maryland, where
Thomas Frew, her grandfather, was born Feb-
ruary 14, 1781. Later his parents, with their
family, removed to Pittsburg, Pa., and settled
permanently. Thomas Frew was an enlisted volun-
teer soldier in the war of 1812. In 1806 he mar-
ried Rachel Lindsey, who was born at Carlisle,
Pa., April 15, 1787, the daughter of Jacob and
Rachel (Garwood) Lindsey, and whose great-
grandfather, John Lindsey, immigrated to Amer-
ica from Glasgow. Scotland, before the Revolu-
tionary war, joining a Quaker colony in Car-
lisle, Pa. There for generations his descen-
dants adhered to the faith of the Society of
Friends.

JOHN WARREN VAN COURT.

October 26, 1898, occurred the death of one of
the early pioneers of California — John Warren
Van Court, — whose fortunes had lain in the
state since his young manhood days. He was a
native of the state of New York, born in New
York City August 28, 1826, and reared in old
Camptown, or what is now Irvington-on-the-
Hudson. He received his education through an
attendance of the public schools, after which he
learned the trade of shoemaker. His brother,
Daniel Willett Van Court, having come to Cali-
fornia, he was persuaded to do so in 1852, and
went to work for his brother, who had estab-
lished a planing and flour mill on the corner of
Ecker and Stevenson streets. After remaining

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

329

there one year he returned to his home in New
York, spending a short time there, when with an-
other brother he again started to California, this
time by way of the Isthmus of Panama. Their
passage was taken on the old ship Tennessee,
and it was during this voyage that it was
wrecked, and upon their escaping to land Mr.
Van Court kindled the fire with which to warm
the women and children who escaped to shore
from the wreck.

John W. Van Court engaged in farming and
dairying in Santa Clara county upon his safe
arrival in California, upon land purchased on a
squatter's title. In common with forty-six other
farmers, however, he finally lost the land because
of defective title. Thereafter he went to the
mountains and located on a cattle ranch on the
San Gregorio creek, just back of Spanishtown,
San Mateo county. There the floods killed his
horses and cattle. A few months afterward Mr.
Van Court came to San Francisco and engaged
in the grocery business on the corner of Octavia
and Hayes streets, continuing there for about five
years and then selling out and engaging as fore-
man of the stockfitting department of Kast
Brothers shoe establishment. Four years later
he engaged in the Capitol mills, then under the
name of Deming Palmer Milling Company, re-
maining in this connection for about seventeen
years. He then went to Vacaville, and leasing a
fruit ranch, engaged in fruit raising for about
three years. He then returned to Oakland (where
his family had lived since March 4, 1882), and
here lived in retirement until his death. He was
a man of ability and energy, known and respected
for his integrity of character, and always found a
place in which to give his support to the forma-
tion and maintenance of law and order, which
cause he espoused during the trying times of the
Vigilance Committee days in San Francisco. Al-
though a stanch Democrat politically he voted
for Abraham Lincoln, for he was a consistent pa-
triot, a Union Democrat.

In Newark, N. J., November 20, 1850, John
W. Van Court was united in marriage with Miss
Elizabeth Ann Lines, who landed in California
Thanksgiving Day 1855. from tne smP Golden
Age. Of the children born to them we mention

the following: Mary Elizabeth Van Court died
at the age of sixteen months, before they left
the east; Eugene Salter Van Court is repre-
sented elsewhere in this volume; Dewitt Carroll
Van Court, instructor for seventeen years in tin
Olympic Club of San Francisco, now resides in
Los Angeles; he married Ella Whipple and hu
one son, Carroll O. Van Court; Nettie Ma> Van
Court became the wife of John M. Polk, ami
their son, Eugene D., died May 3, 1908. After
Mr. Polk's death she became the wife of Will-
iam B. Smith, of Oakland. Mrs. Van Court
still survives and makes her home with her son,
Eugene S., at No. 1356 Harrison street.

ERNEST A. HERON.

The West and Youth have always proven a har-
monious combination, for opportunities have
abounded here and ambition has sought them
with determined purpose, and many are the
records of success which have come to the young
man of energy, ability and steadfastness of pur-
pose. Such an one is Ernest A. Heron, presi-
dent of the Oakland Traction Company and the
San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Consolidated
Railway of Oakland, besides being identified with
numerous other organizations which have proven
factors in the development of this section of Cal-
ifornia.

Mr. Heron came to California at the age of
twenty-one years, having been born in Galena. Jo
Daviess countv, 111., in January, 1852; his educa-
tion was received through the medium of tin-
public and high schools, as well as a private in-
stitution.

In 1873 ne came to California, and in 1875
became secretary to E. C. Sessions, banker and
real estate operator. In 1876 he was one of the
organizers of the Highland Park and Fruitvale
Railroad, and the following year, in 1877. he
established an extensive real estate busing— in
which he was active for twenty-five years.

In 1889 he was one of the organizers and pre-

330

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ident of the Piedmont Cable Railroad, which was
absorbed by the present Oakland Traction Sys-
tem, of which he has served continuously as pres-
ident since its organization in 1895. He is iden-
tified as one of the organizers and president of
the San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Consoli-
dated Railway, known as the Key Route. He is
vice-president of The Realty Syndicate, which
was organized in 1895.

In 1892 Mr. Heron was united in marriage
with Miss Elizabeth M. Dudley, of Stockton,
Cal., and daughter of William L. Dudley, a prom-
inent lawyer of that place. They have two sons,
William Dudley and Ernest Alva, Jr. Mr. Heron
is prominently connected with the Masonic fra-
ternity, being a member of the local lodge, Oak-
land Chapter No. 36, R. A. M., and Oakland
Commandery No. 11, K. T.

JOHN SHUEY.

The Shuey family trace their ancestry to the
French Huguenots. That the proverbial three
brothers came to America in the Mayflower can-
not be claimed by posterity, but it is a fact that in
the eighteenth century three families by that
name were found in America, one in Massachu-
setts, another in Pennsylvania, and a third in Vir-
ginia, a prolific family numbering two thousand
in the United States in 1876.

John Shuey belongs to the Pennsylvania
branch, and was the first one by that name to
find his way to California, in 1847. His father,
Martin Shuey, and mother, Margaret Sbubert
Shuey, of Dutch descent, moved to Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1804, when it was a mere village of
thirty-five' houses. Martin Shuey fought in the
war of 181 2. Beginning his career as captain,
he was by successive promotions made brigadier
general in 1818. He was stationed at Forts
Brown, Winchester, Laramie, St. Mary's and
Jennings during his army life. He was a large
framed man, six feet in height, upright in his
moral as well as in his physical bearing. He had

a deeply religious nature, which was manifest
every day in the week as well as Sunday, inflex-
ible and unyielding if vital principles were in-
volved, equally uncompromising with himself as
with others. While a commandant in the army he
found himself becoming addicted to the use of
tobacco and alcoholic stimulants. Recognizing
this early, he said to himself, "Here I am placed
over these men, to control them, and cannot ride
my own spirit."

Promptly and for the rest of his life he stopped
their use. The same indomitable spirit actuated
him when he followed his son to California in
1859, across the plains in a prairie schooner, after
he was seventy-four years of age. Still more
forcibly was his strength of character shown in
the resoluteness with which he threw off the
morphine habit, contracted late in his eighties,
while suffering from severe neuralgia of the heart.
When he realized that the pain had really dis-
appeared and only the longing for the morphine
for the sake of its intoxicating effects remained,
he stopped it, without a murmur, and only those
who saw the firmly set jaw, the tears stream-
ing down his cheeks, knew the strength of the
battle waged. He died of pneumonia in Fruit-
vale, at the home of his son, John, at ninety years
of age, in full possession of his mental faculties
to the last. If posterity could choose its ancestry
could it make a better choice?

John Shuey was the eldest of ten children,
and the first of four brothers and one sister to
make their home in California. He was married
to Lucinda Stow in 1834 and they made their
home in Adams county, 111. In his early man-
hood he began to dread the cold of the winters
of the middle west, this fact, together with the
inherited pioneer spirit, probably doing much to
cause him to press forward to the Pacific shore,
to a milder climate. His wife had emigrated
when a child from Massachusetts to Ohio, and
shared his ambition, but her growing" family
made it difficult for her to accompany him on such
a long and perilous journey, therefore he set out
without his family in 1847, crossing the Rocky
mountains, taking the old Lewis and Clark route
through Oregon, thence to California. The mild-
ness of the climate and beauty of the country

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

'exceeded his highest expectations, and he re-
turned to Illinois resolved to make his home in
the marvelous country as soon as he could dis-
pose of his possessions in Illinois, but his wife
hesitated ; a country without schools and churches,
whose inhabitants were principally uncivilized
Indians, seemed hardly the place to bring up a
family.

After the discovery of gold John Shuey again
made the trip overland in 1850, taking the more
direct route which passed Salt Lake and Donner
Lake to San Francisco. On this second trip
he personally helped to build a public school-
house, on Rincon Hill, the first one in the state.
He made much of this fact on his return to his
family knowing that one of the greatest objections
of his wife had been overcome, and his dream of
an established home in California was certainly
near its fulfillment. His perseverance conquered.
Means of transportation had been made much
easier by the railroad built from Aspinwall to
Panama. Therefore, he with his family, early in
1856, started down the Mississippi river, crossed
the Gulf of Mexico, thence to Panama. They were
detained there nine days on account of a serious
accident on the Panama Railroad. From there
they took passage on the steamer Golden Age,
with fourteen hundred passengers, for San Fran-
cisco. They arrived at their destination at a time
when San Francisco was passing through an ex-
perience similar in its moral ravages to that of
1908. Imagine the shock of the passengers as
they landed on hearing that two men, Corey
and Casey, at that very hour were being hanged.
The stillness of the city was oppressive, sug-
gesting the presence of death, or approaching ca-
lamity. But they were assured that all would
be well, for a vigilance committee of law-abiding
citizens had taken the reins of • government from
corrupt and desperate public officials, and would
uphold the law at any cost. Confidence speedily
took the place of dismay, and order prevailed.

John Shuey, being a farmer, sought a farm, or
ranch as it was called in those days, and found
one in Moraga valley, Contra Costa county, that
suited him. He remained on it but a short time
however. On account of . an unjust title which
CaTpentleFclaimed, he refused to pay twice for

the property and removed to Fruitvale, Alameda
county.

His wife at this time wished to make their
home in Oakland, its forest of liveoaks and cat
pet of baby-blue eyes, ferns and butter cups,
seemed a paradise, but her husband said, "It will
never do to subject growing boys to the tempta-
tions that come from great wealth and a place
with so many natural resources will be a j^riat city
before many years and we cannot run the risk of
ruining our boys."' With the <amc strong, true
principles of his father, he placed the welfare of
his children above great wealth. His civic duties
and privileges were as sacred to him as those of
his family. He never failed to cast his vote at
every election, municipal, state or national, and
was by turns a Whig, Abolitionist and Republi-
can. He took a keen interest in acquainting him-
self with the character of the candidates, and
was frequently obliged to sacrifice his party to
his principles.

While his religious nature was strong, he could
not honestly endorse the creed of his father, the
close communion Baptist in which he had been
brought up, but joined the Presbyterian and ac-
cepted with heartiness the views of the liberal and
independent Presbyterian. Rev. Mr. Hamilton.

One of the pleasantest recollections of his life
in California, which he loved to recall, were the
hours spent on the "bar" waiting for the tide to
rise, as the ferry boat plying between Oakland
and San Francisco made its trip once a day.
Starr King, the patriot, was the inspiration oi the
hour, holding his fellow-passengers spellbound
as he talked earnestly and ferventlv on burning
questions in those days of the Civil war.

John Shuey's brother. Robert, in his eighty-
eighth year is the only surviving member of his
generation. He lives in East Oakland. John
Shuey died in 1875 at sixtv-four years of age, a
victim of the "great white plague." The sunny
climate of California and the roving out door
life checked its ravages, but did not give him
resistance to overcome the disease. He and nil
wife had ten children, and mothered and fathered
two. taking them in early childhood and keeping
them until they married : Josephus. their eMr*t
son. died in his infancy: Virgil, the next child.

332

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

just as he was about to take his degree in medi-
cine was accidentally killed while hunting;
Sophronia E., wife of J. H. Putnam, lives in
Washington ; Homer Stow Shuey lives in Berke-
ley, Cal. ; Margeret M., wife of C. R. Stetson, in
Oakland ; Marcus Martin, in Sacramento, Cal. ;
Sarah I. and Mary A., wife of A. J. Young,
Danville, Cal., are twins; and John Winfield, of
Fresno county, and Henry Webster, of San
Luis Obispo county, are twins. Shuey avenue,
one of the streets of Fruitvale, passes through
the old homestead, where John Shuey lived the
last twenty-five years of his life.

When Mrs. Shuey's children and grand-chil-
dren met at the reading of her will, Judge Steph-
en G. Nye said it was the most remarkable fam-
ily he had ever dealt with, as legal executor. By
some mischance the original will had been lost
and the duplicate had no standing before the
law, but with one accord and eagerly the will
was legalized by the signatures of the heirs,
without a single dissenting voice. After the
death of John Shuey, his wife lived with their
daughter Dr. Sarah I. Shuey. Dr. Shuey had
earned her education by teaching. Not satis-
fied with the then meager training of the State
Normal school she entered the State University
at Berkeley, giving six years to the academic and
medical course. After her graduation she found
herself $1,500 in debt. This did not trouble her.
She had good friends, her family was well known,
and the faculty of the University were interested
in her success. In four years she was out of
debt. At this time her mother's death occurred
and broke up her pleasant home. Having suf-
ficient funds she went to Europe, resolved to
spend half her time in work and half in play, and
to remain as long as her money lasted, which to
her surprise was nearly two and a half years.
Her studies were in Dresden in a hospital under
the direction of Herr Gehemirath Winkel, and at
the Zurich University, and the hospitals of Paris.
Her playtime was in sight-seeing in Germany,
Switzerland, Italy and England. On her return,
through friends in southern California, she be-
came deeply impressed with the great need of
a home-like shelter for the strangers who were
flocking there for health. She consequently built

a large, roomy, sunny home beautifully located
near the Sierra Madre Villa in the foothills near
Pasadena. It proved to be what many weary in-
valids needed. It offered rest, good food, plenty
of sunshine and fresh air, the best of kind, intelli-
gent care, and pleasant surroundings, both in the
house, the orange groves and vineyards and the
beautiful San Gabriel valley below.

The people in the country welcomed Dr. Shuey
and she soon had a busy practice among them.
It proved too great for her strength, however,
and after a severe illness she returned to Oakland
to her life-long friend, Dr. C. Annette Buekel,
where she has since remained. Dr. Shuey's aim
has always been to consider the true interests of
her patients. In order to do this successfully she
felt that she must not only understand the in-
fluences in their own home, but the causes of
danger in all the unsanitary conditions that affect
the public health. Hence she has been an enthu-
siastic worker on the City Board of Health, the
Associated Charities, in the Home Club Milk
Commission for pure healthy milk, and in the
cause of the Juvenile Court as treasurer of the
Probation Committee and as physician to philan-
thropic societies. With such broad views her own
character has naturally grown nobler and stronger
and her sisters and brothers in the profession
recognize her as a power for good, a worthy
example of the "beloved physician," by which
younger members of the profession can profit.

JESSE LAMEREAUX WETMORE.

Jesse Lamereaux Wetmore, a pioneer of '49,
was born in St. John, New Brunswick, October
31, 182 r, a son of J. L. and Phoebe (Clark)
Wetmore, the father a descendant of the Wet-
mores of England who can trace their ancestry
back to the twelfth century, and the mother a
descendant of Anna Van Cott, of Holland birth.
They were both of a long-lived race, an uncle
and aunt having celebrated their seventieth wed-
ding anniversary. Jesse L. Wetmore received his

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

335

education in the common schools in his native
place, after which he engaged as a farmer until
taking up the work of contracting and build-
ing. After marrying in New Brunswick in 1843
Matilda H. Hammer, of German extraction, he
lived one year in Boston, then went to Portland,
Me., and there engaged as a builder. A spirit
of unrest brought him to California, and with
others who came at the same time he embarked
for the journey, crossing the Isthmus. After a
safe voyage he landed in San Francisco, there
followed his business for one year and then re-
turned home. After a brief visit he again went
to California and engaged in business in San
Francisco for a time, then removed to Oakland
when it was only a small village and built his
home on Clay between Tenth and Eleventh
streets. In 1861 he went to Chili, South America,
and engaged with Harry Meigs in railroad con-
tracting, building the road between Santiago and
Valparaiso, which occupied about four years. He
then engaged in the guano business in Bolivia
for about two years, and from that time until
1873 was in Peru engaged in building the rail-
road over the Andes mountains. In all of these
undertakings he was associated with Mr. Meigs.
During the time Mr. Wetmore was in Bolivia the
failure of a French bank precipitated his finan-
cial ruin, losing him a half million and throwing
him a million dollars in debt. In 1873 he re-
turned to California and in Oakland engaged in
the real estate business and was very successful,
acquiring considerable means again before his
death, which occurred January 1, 1902. His wife
died May 5, 1901, both passing away in the home
where they celebrated their golden wedding.
They had six children, all of whom are living.
Edward Louis, an assayer, is married and resides
in Tucson, Ariz. ; Charles A. is in the wine busi-
ness in Livermore. Cal., and is also married ;
Blanche Isabel is the widow of Dr. Sherman ;
Clarence J. is in the wine business in Oakland,
also married; Ida Matilda resides in Piedmont;
and Anna Louise resides on the old home place.
Mr. Wetmore was a member of the Episcopal
Church and thoroughly liberal in all his dealings
with the public, and in politics was a stanch advo-
cate of Republican principles. Of a genial tem-

perament and interesting personal characteristics,
and suave diplomacy, he was a general favorite
wherever known, ami held a place high in the
esteem of the citizens of Oakland, toward whose
upbuilding no man was more prominent and
helpful.

GEN. JOSEPH G. WALL.

Among the men to whom California owes a
debt of gratitude for his contribution toward her
wonderful development, rapid progress and pres-
ent prosperity, mention belongs to the late Gen.
Joseph G. Wall. During his residence of over half
a century in the state, first in Crescent City, Del
Norte county, and later in Alameda, he became
identified with the establishment of various bene-
ficial enterprises, which not only contributed to
his own financial well being, but proved an in-
valuable stimulus to the business life of both
places. He was recognized as a man of unques-
tioned integrity, straightforward and honest in
all of his transactions, and as one of the most
successful and competent business men of his
time. A native of Ireland, he was born in the
city of Dublin, in July, 1827, and made that city
his home until fourteen years of age.

At this early age J. G. Wall began to follow
the venturesome life of the sailor, at first sailing
from British ports on the Atlantic ocean, and
later following this calling on the Pacific. At the
time of the wreck of the General Warren ho was
returning from a visit to Oregon City, and on
account of his experience as a sailor he was se-
lected by Captain Flavel as one of the crew of the
boat to seek relief. As an outcome of the trying
ordeal through which they passed a strong friend
ship sprang up between the ''pilot king." as Cap-
tain Flavel was called, and Captain Wall, and
every year thereafter until the death of Captain
Flavel they wotdd meet and recount tne stirring
experiences which brought them together. Cap-
tain Wall going to Captain Flavel's home in Ore-
gon one year, and the following year Captain
Flavel would visit his friend in California. At

336

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the time of the wreck of the Brother Jonathan,
General Wall rendered valuable assistance to the
few survivors and also took an active part in
searching for bodies of the unfortunate victims:
As his title would suggest General Wall was also
prominent in military affairs, having served in
the militia companies of the Sixth Brigade in Del
Norte, Humboldt, Klamath and Mendocino coun-
ties for fourteen years.

Upon locating in Crescent City in 1852, Gen-
eral Wall was very favorably impressed with the
future prospects of the little town, and as an
evidence of his faith he embarked in a number of
enterprises and invested considerable capital in
real estate. Besides establishing a mercantile,
business he engaged in the sheep and cattle busi-
ness, in both of which endeavors he succeeded
beyond his fondest expectations. In addition to
the interests just mentioned he acted as agent for
Wells, Fargo & Co. for about thirty years, but
at the end of this time withdrew from all other
interests to concentrate his efforts in his lumber
business, which in the meantime he had estab-
lished. In this as in all previous undertakings
he was eminently successful, in fact, he was con-
ceded to be one of the most successful lumber
dealers in that section of the country, owning ex-
tensive mills for the manufacture of lumber and
shingles. The firm of Hobbs, Wall & Co., of
which he was a member, constructed a $40,000
bridge across Smith river, connecting the city of
that name with Crescent City, and thus securing
easy access to a large tract of redwood timber
which General Wall owned at Smith River. The
firm of Hobbs, Wall & Co. is one of the oldest
lumber enterprises in the state, being as well
known as are many of the coasting vessels which
they have constructed, among which may be
mentioned the schooners J. G. Wall, Mary D.
Pomeroy and Ocean Pearl. General Wall also
built the steamers Crescent City and the two Del
Nortes, naming them after the city and county
in which he then resided. He also owned one
of the largest wharves on the coast.

From the foregoing enumeration it would ap-
pear that General Wall's entire time and attention
were consumed in looking after his private in-
terests, but this was not so, for he was keenly

alive to matters of public import and was espe-
cially interested in political matters. Of later
years, however, he withdrew to some extent from
public and business life, and prior to his removal
to Alameda had disposed of a large portion of
his interests. After locating in this city in 1887
he made large investments in real estate and also
erected the residence now occupied bv the fam-
ily, which is considered one of the finest resi-
dences in Alameda.

The marriage of General Wall in 1855 united
him with Miss Margaret Magruder, who was
born in Springfield, 111., and came with her pa-
rents to Oregon in T844. Seven children were
born of the marriage of General Wall and his
wife, named in the order of their birth as follows :
Mary A., wife of Captain Richard Bradley ; Jo-
seph A., who resides in the northern part of the
state ; and Edward M., Richard R. T., Jessie, Mar-
garet J. and Carlton Hobbs. Fraternally General
Wall was well known, especially in Masonry, for
he was a member of all branches of the order.
His death in Alameda December 31, 1900, was
the occasion of general mourning, for he was a
man beloved by all who knew him, and in his
passing not only has Alameda lost a valuable citi-
zen, but the state has lost one of her sturdy up-
builders.

PHILIP MELANCTHON FISHER.

One of the most successful educators in the
state of California, Philip Melancthon Fisher has
been acting as principal of the Polytechnic high
school of Oakland since its organization in June,
1896, having by many years of experience estab-
lished his reputation in Alameda county. In-
heriting his traits of character as well as his un-
usual ability, Mr. Fisher was born in Berlin,
Somerset county, Pa., June 1, 1852, a son of
John H. and Anna (Gilbert) Fisher; both par-
ents were born in Germany near Marburg, and
in their young married life came to America in
1834, and located on a farm in the vicinity of
Berlin. There eight sons and three daughters

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

were born to them, and of this number eight
fitted themselves to become teachers. The pater-
nal great-grandfather had taught school in Ger-
many for forty years. Two sons, Frank and Will,
graduates of Gettysburg College and Theological
Seminary, are now doctors of divinity in the Lu-
theran Church in Pennsylvania ; Harry W., for
nine years superintendent of schools of Bedford
county, Pa., is now, and has been for more than
thirty years, at the head of the Seventeenth ward
schools in Pittsburg ; John G. was clerk of the
county commissioners of Bedford county for a
dozen years, and was editor of the Bedford
Gazette for a long period ; Tobial S. served for
three years as a volunteer during the Civil war,
has been justice of the peace and is now a pen-
sioner on account of wounds, capture and im-
prisonment; Emma J. lost her life in the mis-
sionary service in Liberia, Africa ; Philip M. was
educated in the public schools of Berlin and in
private schools and began teaching in his
fifteenth year, becoming principal of the Meyers-
dale school in Pennsylvania at the age of eighteen,
and acquiring prominence as a speaker for local
option during that winter. Teaching in the
winter seasons, he learned the trade of plasterer
during the summers. In 1873 he entered Mount
L/nion College, Ohio, at which he was graduated
with the degree of Ph. B. in the summer of 1876,
and was at once elected principal of the school in
his native town.

It will thus be seen that Philip M. Fisher was
fitted both by nature and training to follow this
profession, and the June following his arrival in
Oakland, May 4, 1877, found him successfully
passing the teacher's examination, after which
he began teaching in the Sunol district school, of
Alameda county. He continued in that position
for the period of three years, when he was chosen
principal of the Irvington school. Two years
later ( 1882) he was elected county superintend-
ent of schools, and re-elected in 1886. During
his incumbency he thoroughly organized the
schools of the interior in a graded system and in-
creased greatly their efficiency and popularity.
During this same period he led in the movement
for the display of the flag on the school-grounds.
From 1 891 to 1896 Mr. Fisher was the editor and

publisher of the Pacific Educational Journal, the
official organ of the school department of the
state. During this period he was secretary of the
committee on education of the state senate for
two terms, and secretary of the committee on
county and township government one session.
Throughout these same years he was called upon
as a lecturer at teachers' institutes in nearly ever]
county of the state. In 1891 he was the author
of the Union District High School bill, which
became a law, largely through his efforts. This
measure was so popular and its enactment so
timely that it caused an unprecedented increase
in the number of high schools established in the
state. In the Republican state convention of
1894 he was a leading candidate for the office of
superintendent of public instruction and only
failed because of geographical distribution of
offices. In the summer of 1896 he was tendered
the principalship of what is now the Polytechnic
high school of Oakland, which position he Mill
fills. Mr. Fisher has taken an active part in
local and state associations of teachers, leading
in the organization of the teachers' club of
Alameda county, and is persistent in his advocacy
of high standards, tenure and annuity. In the
state association he has been a member of the
educational council for fifteen years, and has nl>>>
been a member of the County Board of Educa-
tion for eighteen year«.

The marriage of Mr. Fisher occurred in Mis-
sion San Jose. Gal., January 3. 1884, and united
him with Miss Anna C. Lanmcister. Rorn of this
union are four children : Xclda B., a senior of
the University of California (1908); Philip M..
Tr.. a junior in the Polytechnic high school: and
Margery and Charles W., in the grammar
schools. Mrs. Fisher was born in San Francisco,
September 5. 1858. a daughter of John A. and
Frederica (HaussleO Lmmeister. both of Ger-
man nativity. Mr. Lanmcister was a pioneer
miller of the Pacific coast and a member of the
vigilantes of San Francisco in the '50s. The fam-
ily were well known in the early days of San
Francisco, and a nephew. Charles, was sheriff of
San Francisco county, a member of the Board of
Railroad Commissioners, and is at this writing
president of the Merchants' Exchange of San

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

338

Francisco. Mrs. Fisher was the efficient deputy
county superintendent during the greater part of
her husband's incumbency of the office. Her
large acquaintance, familiarity with early Cali-
fornia history, her charm of manner, and quick
intuition have been recognized as of great assist-
ance to her husband in his career.

Mr. Fisher has always stood for the principle
that a teacher should take an active interest in
politics, — the politics that looks to the promotion
of civic pride and good government. He has,
therefore, frequently been a member of conven-
tions in city, county and state, having been partic-
ularly active on behalf of ex-Governor Pardee.
He has also found time to ally himself with vari-
ous fraternal organizations, being prominently
identified with the Ancient Order of United
Workmen; was secretary and master of his
lodge, and was for three years orator at the
annual picnic of the order in the eastern part of
the county. He is also a Mason, being a member
of Alameda Lodge No. 167, F. & A. M., and has
occupied offices in the same, and also in Live
Oak Lodge No. 68. Mr. Fisher has been public
spirited to a degree, taking a most active interest
in all matters of public import. He is success-
ful in his work of teacher, not alone through in-
tellectual qualities and education, but through
qualities of heart which win him the respect of
his pupils and make him countless friends among
the parents, thus establishing for him a position
among the representative citizens of California.

BENJAMIN IDE WHEELER.

There is in the whole world no higher field
of usefulness than that of educational activity and
those who are giving their lives to the training
of the young are of all others the most helpful
factors in the development of the race. California
'has gained a wide reputation for its thoroughness
in educational work, and this high standing is
due to its talented educators, one of whom is
Benjamin Idc Wheeler, president of the Univer-

sity of California. He was born in Randolph,
Mass., July 15, 1854, the son of Benjamin and
Mary E. Ide Wheeler. In June, 1881, he mar-
ried Amey Webb, of Providence, R. I. He
studied at Colby Academy, New London, N. H.,
and at Thornton Academy, Saco, Me. In 1875
he received the degree of A. B. and in 1878 that
of A. M. from Brown University, delivering the
classical oration at commencement, and being-
elected to Phi Beta Kappa. After teaching in
the Providence high school and serving as a tutor
in Brown University, he went to Germany.
After four years of study of classical philology
at Berlin, Leipzig, Jena and Heidelberg he re-
ceived the degree of Ph. D., summa cum.laude,
from Heidelberg. He spent a year at Harvard
University as instructor in German, and in 1886
was called to Cornell University as professor of
comparative philology. In 1888 his chair was
made that of Greek and comparative philology.
In 1895-96 he was professor of the Greek lan-
guage and literature in the American School of
Classical Studies in Athens, Greece, and while
there he aided in the first excavations of the
site of ancient Corinth, serving as one of the
judges at the finish for the track sports at the
first modern revival of the Olympian Games.
July 18, 1899, he became president of the Univer-
sity of California.

President Wheeler received the honorary de-
gree of LL. D. from Princeton University at the
Sesqui-centenary of 1896, from Brown Univer-
sity and Harvard University in 1900, from Yale
University at the Bi-centenary in 1901, and from
Johns Hopkins University at its twenty-fifth anni-
versary in 1901. He is a corresponding member
of the Kaiserlich Archaologisches Institut, and a
member of the American Philological Society,
the American Oriental Society, the American
Social Science Association and the Archeolog-
ical Institute of America.

Among his published writings are the Greek
Noun Accent (his doctoral thesis, Strassbursj.
1885) ; Analogy and the Scope of its Influence in
Language (1887) ; Introduction to the Study of
the History of Language (with H. A. Strong
and W. S. Logeman, 1890) ; Dionysos and Im-
mortality, 1899 (the Ingersoll Lecture at Har-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

vard University) : The Organization of Higher
Education in the United States, 1896; and Life
of Alexander the Great, 1900. As associate edi-
tor he was in charge of the Department of Com-
parative Philology and Linguistics in Johrison's
Universal Cyclopaedia (1892-95), and of the
same department in the Macmillan Dictionary of
Philosophy and Psychology. He has been a fre-
quent contributor to various magazines and
! journals.

FRANCIS J. FLUNO.

A man of international reputation, F. J. Fluno,
M. D., C. S. D., of Oakland, was born on a farm
in Otsego county, N. Y., September 15, 1845, a
son of Isaac and Jane (Smith) Fluno, both of
whom also were born in that state. There the
father followed agricultural pursuits until he re-
i moved to Wisconsin, where he again engaged in
his chosen vocation. After a long and useful life,
both parents passed away in that state.

Francis J. Fluno received his early education
in the common schools of Wisconsin, which then
were :n a primitive condition. He completed at

■ the University in Madison. During the Civil war
he enlisted for service in the Union army, serv-
ing as a volunteer in the Forty-first Wisconsin
Regiment, until the discharge of the regiment.
He began the study of medicine at the Homeo-
pathic school in Iowa City, Iowa, became a prac-
titioner, and later entered the Homeopathic
Medical College at Chicago. After completing

■ the course he took up the practice of his profes-
sion in Chicago.

In 1885 he began the perusal of "Science and
Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary
Baker G. Eddy, the book then being in its thir-
teenth edition. This new teaching greatly in-
terested and impressed him and ultimately he
found he could no longer administer drugs to the
sick. In this same year he entered the Massa-
chusetts Metaphysical College under Mrs. Eddy's
instructions, and two years later he completed the
normal course. He came to the Pacific coast and

located in Oakland. Since that time he has been
engaged as teacher and healer of Christian
Science. He was largely instrumental in the
building of the Christian Science church in Oak-
land, which is one of the finest edifices of its
kind on the Pacific coast.

In 1898 Dr. Fluno was appointed to the board
of lectureship of the mother church in Boston,
Mass., and has lectured throughout the United
States, in Canada, Australia and the Orient, and
at various times his writings and lectures have
appeared in periodicals and pamphlet form.

Dr. Fluno has been a resident of Oakland since
1888, and has sought to advance the general in-
terests of the community, purchasing valuable
real estate, and being keenly alive to the needs of
the state, supporting those measures that have
had for their object the general upbuilding of
the city, county and state. He holds a high posi-
tion among the followers of the Christian Science
Society, and enjoys the esteem and confidence of
his fellow townsmen.

The doctor was united in marriage May 11.
1881, with Ella V. Jennings of Wisconsin. She
is a daughter of Nathan L. and Deborah (Wil-
son) Jennings, pioneers in Wisconsin. They are
the parents cf four children, viz.: Eleanor L.,
wife of George H. S. Halv. of Oakland: Yin-
cent J., Lillian E., and Mary L'., at home.

SARGENT SHAW MORTOX.

For many years a business man of San Fran-
cisco, Sargent Shaw Morton was one of the
prominent upbuilders of the interests of that
city and a citizen who gave his best efforts to-
ward furthering plans advanced for the develop-
ment of internal affairs. He was for many years,
and until 1906. receiver of public moneys and dis-
bursing agent in the United States Land Office
in San Francisco. He resides in Alameda, where
he is numbered among the progressive and enter-
prising citizens. Mr. Morton is a native of Maine,
his birth having occurred in Standish. Cumber-

342

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

land county, December 3, 1833. His father, David
Morton, was a native of Gorham, Me., and a sol-
dier in the war of 1812; his paternal grandfather
served in the Revolutionary war for the seven
years of its duration, participating in many im-
portant engagements, among them, the battle of
Long Island, where General Sullivan was taken
prisoner. He was sick in a hospital when it
was attacked by the British ; he crawled out and
hid under a haystack until the raid was over,
then came out and met a man and asked to be
directed to Washington's camp. The stranger
did this and also gave him $10 to assist him in
rejoining the army. He was also in the expedi-
tion under General Montgomery, that went
through Maine to Quebec, and where, after the
death of the commander and wounding of Gen-
eral Arnold, the remnants of the army retreated
up the St. Lawrence river. At the close of the
service he received $1 and a drink of New Eng-
land rum for his seven years' service, while his
son, a soldier in the war of 1812, was given a
pension. Mr. Morton's mother was before mar-
riage Salome Shaw, and her oldest brother's
name she bestowed upon her son.

Sargent Shaw Morton was reared in his native
state, remaining at home only until fourteen
years old, when he found employment on a farm
in the neighborhood. When he was sixteen years
old he went to Boston, Mass., and in the vicinity
of the city engaged in blasting for several months,
then worked at teaming for two years. In 1852
he was drawn to the western coast by the golden
attractions of California, taking passage on the
steamer Cherokee, commanded by Captain Hern-
don, who was afterward lost at sea in the steam-
ship Central America. He visited Havana at the
time of the filibustering, and then took passage
on the Eldorado, a steamer bound for the Isth-
mus. The passengers went up the Chagres river
to Crnces, and from there Mr. Morton went to
Gorgona. Because of the lack of funds he started
to walk to Panama, put up at the Halfway house
in the mountains, and in the morning resumed his
journey and arrived bareheaded and barefooted
in the city of Panama. His hat had been stolen
and his shoes worn out ; he succeeded in purchas-
ing a hat and a pair of slippers, as his belongings

had been sent by a mule-train ahead of him. He
found there were two steamers bound for San
Francisco, the California that evening at six
o'clock, and the Golden Gate in a few days. He
decided to catch the former, but a storm came
up and carried the rowboat in which he was
being taken to the ship five miles beyond, and
when they managed to return to the California it
was after dark. The journey was one of extreme
trial and peril — Panama fever being prevalent
on the steamer and where they stopped for some-
thing to eat, and cholera breaking out on board.
Twenty-eight persons died on the journey to San
Francisco and were buried at sea. Mr. Morton
was accompanied on the journey by his brother,
who was taken with the cholera morbus ; he
cared for him several nights but being worn
out fell asleep and when he awakened, found his
brother gone. Someone told him he had been
thrown overboard, but he discovered a few min-
utes later that he was alive and getting well,
which relieved him very much. He also met
on the journey a friend of his father's, who knew
the son because of the family resemblance ; this
man died with the cholera and was buried at San
Diego.

On the 28th of July, 1852, Mr. Morton arrived
in San Francisco. He had expected to meet an-
other brother in that city and not finding him
on the wharf asked a hackman where he was,,
naming him. The latter said he would tell him
if in turn Mr. Morton would tell him who was
nominated for president. He told him Scott and
Pierce. The -exchange of information was made
and Mr. Morton went in search of his brother,
and neither of them knew the other when they
met, having been separated for eight years. Mr.
Morton then found employment in digging a
foundation for a church in San Francisco on
California street, then did teaming for a couple
of months. Deciding to try his luck in the
mines of the state, he went to Stockton and there
hired a three-horse team and with twenty others
started for Angel's Camp in Calaveras county.
He was on the road for three days in one of the
heavy rains of the season and during the three
weeks he stayed in the camp it continued to rain.
Disgusted with the conditions, he returned to

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

.'543

Stockton and thence took passage on a boat back
to San Francisco, where he secured employment
as a driver of a team at $6 per day. With a
partner he then went to Mountain View, Santa
Clara county, and there established a hotel and
began ranching. They raised about six thou-
sand bushels of grain but because of an over-
supply of crops that year went deeply in debt.
Dissolving partnership, Mr. Morton returned to
San Francisco, with $20 where he had started
with $700. He then went to teaming as fore-
man for his brother and followed this until 1854.
One day he met two old friends who were on
their way to catch a boat bound for the east via
Nicaragua. He decided to go with them and
hastily mounting a saddled horse near them he
rode home for another suit of clothes and re-
turned just in time to catch the steamer. In
General Walker's camp he was offered $100 a
month and after the close of the war one hundred
and sixty acres of land. But none of the three
wished to enlist, so after spending the night there
thev resumed their journey. He arrived without
mishap in New England and there he remained
until 1856.

Again locating in San Francisco, he engaged in
buying scrap iron for the Pacific Roller Mills,
with whom he remained employed for the period
of four months. He then engaged as foreman
for his brothers in the teaming business and six
years later, with John Ruggles for partner, he
purchased the draying business. When Blaine
was nominated for the presidency he again went
east as an alternate delegate to the Chicago con-
vention. He was ill for a time on his arrival and
when he recovered he gave his seat to his nephew
and being ordered east by his physician set out
with the intention of seeing Blaine, having met
Logan in Chicago. However, they passed on the
road and he never met the great man he so much
admired. For about thirty years Mr. Morton
remained in the draying business in San Francis-
co, then sold out and became a candidate for the
office of supervisor and was elected on the Re-
publican ticket. This was in 1886 and from that
time to the present he has remained actively
identified with the political life of the communi-
ty. He occupied the position of receiver of pub-

lic moneys and disbursing agent in the United
States Land Office until the fire of April 18,
1906. He was one of the organizers of the
Business Men's Club of San Francisco, and in
many ways was active in the upbuilding and de-
velopment of the city's interests.

Mr. Morton has been twice married, the first
ceremony being performed in 1855 and uniting
him with Harriet Abbott, a native of Worcester.
Mass., who left him three children : Belle, who
married Frank Butterfield, and died in Oakland ;
Frank Herbert, engaged for seventeen years with
the water company of San Francisco and then in
a hotel which was burned in the great fire of
1906 ; and Hattie, Mrs. Rogers, of Alameda. Mr.
Morton was again married January 16, 1901, to
Caroline Matilda Morel, a daughter of Eugene
and Rozena (Yogcl) Morel; she was born in
Algiers, Africa, whence they emigrated to N'orth
Carolina, and thence in 1876 to Napa county,
California. Mr. Morton has been one of the
most conservative and successful business men of
this part of California, and has won a financial
success for himself and at the same time con-
tributed liberally to the general welfare. lie is
held in high esteem by all who know him, ap-
preciated both for his public spirit and the per
sonal character which has won him many friends.

DAVID DAY HARRIS.

Interesting reminiscences of the "days oi oW
and the days of gold" form a part of the eveninq
of the years of David Dav Harris, one of the
forty-niners and during all the years a helpful,
practical and successful citizen of California
Mr. Harris is the descendant of one of the oM
New England families, and was born in Chester-
field, N. H.. March 10. 1823. a son of John and
Lunv (Fletcher) Harris He attended first a
public school and later an academv, patting
aside his studies at the age of fourteen years to
engage as a clerk in a store. Cntil the discover]
of gold in California he remained in this work

344

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

in his native state. At that time he outfitted with
others for the trip across the plains, which
though perilous to a degree, was passed in safety
because of the countless number of people mak-
ing the trip at that time.

Upon his arrival in the state Mr. Harris went
first to Shingle Springs, near Placerville, and
there he saw the gold in its native state for the
first time. After a time he and his party decided
to go to Coloma, where they took up claims and
began prospecting. Discovering what they
thought would prove a profitable venture, they
secured a rocker on credit from a man who made
them and went to work. By Saturday night they
had taken out sufficient gold to meet all obliga-
tions made through the week. They did not re-
main in this location long, however, because of the
glowing reports of other spots where gold was to
be found in even greater quantities, and shortly
afterward they found themselves on the Ameri-
can river. They located a bar and set their rock-
er and for a time took out from $35 to $40 per
day. When they had worked that out they be-
gan to look for winter quarters, deciding not to
go to Feather river because it was so far north
they were likely to be snowed in if they under-
took mining at that time of year. For a short
time they were located at Mokelumne Hill, where
they took out about $20 per day, but this also
was quickly worked out. Leaving their gold dust
with a merchant by the name of M. F. McKin-
ney, they then prospected until spring, when the
party broke up. At that time Mr. Harris went
into partnership with J. H. Updegraff, a farmer,
who had been one of those who crossed the
plains in his party, and who during the years of
association proved himself a friend worthy the
name. They embarked in the hay business for a
time, cutting the wild grass and taking it to
Sacramento, where they sold it for high prices
during the next winter. In the spring they de-
cided to establish a mercantile business, and
accordingly Mr. Harris went out on horseback to
find a suitable location. He rode for four days
through continuous wild oats, and finally found a
store which lie bought and then sent word to
send on the goods, as he had found a place. At

this time they had taken a third man into part-
nership with them.

In the spring of 185 1 there were reports of
shortage of provisions for the immigrants who
were then crossing the plains to California, and
Mr. Harris and his partners loaded a pack train
and sent it out to meet the incoming settlers.
Much of their pay had to be taken in stock, but
this was afterward sold at a good figure. Sub-
sequently Mr. Harris and his partners were
burned out and in the fall of 1851 they went to
Sacramento and opened up a business. In 1852
they lost all of their goods by the big flood
that came upon that city. Mr. Harris then
spent a part of 1853 and 1854 in San Fran-
cisco, and in 1855 went to Oroville, where he
invested his means in various enterprises, prin-
cipally in mining interests, and also purchased
property and erected buildings, one of which is
now the Union hotel. In 1864 he was in the em-
ploy of General Bidwell, remaining for two
years, then became bookkeeper for George F.
Jones, one of the large merchants of the place,
and finally became a partner in the business
buying the stock with a Mr. Sanderson. In 1876
he died and Mr. Harris conducted the enter-
prise for a few months, and then sold out. Dur-
ing these years he had also interested himself
in other matters ; with "Uncle Ben Bliven" he
engaged in the raising of stock and the growing
of large tracts of wheat. He also had invested
heavily in Cherokee Flats, which after great ex-
pense and many discouragements became a great
gold producer, one bar of metal cast being worth
$73,000, one of the most valuable in the world.

Having accumulated a competence, in 1880 Mr.
Harris came to San Francisco and decided to
make this city his home. In 1888 he erected his
present residence at No. 2160 Vallejo street,
and here he is spending" the twilight of his days
in peace and plentv, renewing his youth with the
younger generation and proving always an en-
tertaining and interesting companion. He was
married in 1857 to Miss Augusta Elliot, a native
of Bath, Me. Thev have one daughter, Olive
Eveleth, who is the wife of George W. Brooks,
secretary and superintendent of the Califor-
nia Insurance Company of San Francisco, and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

:;47

they are the parents of four daughters, Loraine,
Madeline, Eveleth and Frances. Mr. Harris is
a member of the Unitarian Church and a liberal
contributor to its charities. In memory of the
early days in California he belongs to the So-
ciety of California Pioneers and is foremost in
his efforts to keep intact everything that re-
calls that time in which a statehood was built,
and men's lives and characters were given to
this cause.

FRANKLIN WARNER.

Remembered as a helpful pioneer of California
and especially of the city of Oakland, is the
late Franklin Warner, an early educator of the
state and later an important factor in the realty
activity of this city. He was born September
16, 1818, in Pittsford, Vt., the descendant of an
old New England family prominent in colonial
history during the Revolutionary war. He re-
ceived his education in the primitive schools in
the vicinity of his home, and attended Middle-
bury College and at Castleton for a time, after
which, at the age of twenty years, he left home
and started out in the world on his own re-
sponsibility. Studious and industrious by nature,
he had acquired a good education despite adverse
conditions, and upon leaving home he engaged in
teaching in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Mississippi.
During his residence in the latter state, upon the
breaking out of the Mexican war, he enlisted
for service and participated in that struggle. To
the Mexican veteran it was but a step into Cali-
fornia, which was brought so forcibly to their
minds during that struggle, and after receiving
his honorable discharge Mr. Warner came on
to the Pacific coast. He went to the mining
sections of the country and spent some time
engaged as a miner, but not meeting with the
success desired he gave it up. Coming to Oak-
land he remained here for a time, then began
teaching school. In 1854 and '55 and the spring
of 1856 he taught in the first public
school in Oakland, and from 1856 to i860
21

he taught in the Durant G>lle»iate school.
In i860 he again returned to the public
schools. Upon the inception of the founding
of the University of California he devoted months
to advocating the necessity of such an institu-
tion as the Durant Collegiate school, which was
the foundation of our present unfversit] ; he
spent four years teaching in the above school, all
of his work being of the highest standard and
for the uph'fting of the young people.

In 1856 Mr. Warner was married to Miss
Sarah Hinds Walker, the daughter of Marzillai
and Nancy French (Hinds) Walker. In 1853
Miss Walker came to California with some
friends from Taunton. Mass., crossing the
Isthmus. She was born in Boston and was edu-
cated in Warren Ladies Seminary, in Rhode
Island. She taught school first at the age ol
fifteen vears and continued teaching from that
time until coming to California. Here she con-
tinued her pedagogical work, being the third
teacher in the Oakland schools.

In 1857 Mr- Warner purchased land between
Twenty-eighth and Thirtieth streets and Linden
and San Pablo avenues, called the Warner tract.
After subdividing the land he erected many
houses in the hope of inducing a class of home-
seekers to settle here. His first residence was
between Second and Third streets on Brush.
Later Mr. Warner decided to engage in the real
estate business in Oakland, first disposing of his
own property, and this he found so profitable
that he continued so occupied up to the time of
his death, which occurred January 14, igoi.
Mr. Warner had been a Mason of many years
standing, and was a charter member of Live Oak
Lodge No. 61. F. ft A. M., of Oakland. Mrs.
Warner is affiliated with the Presbyterian
Church.

WILLIAM CHAUXCEY BARTLF.TT.

The passing away of William C. Bartlrtt on
Sunday afternoon. December 8. 1007. marked
the close of a long and honorable career in both

348

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ministerial and journalistic fields, as well as the
loss of one of California's pioneers and one of
Oakland's old-time residents, he having made
his home here for forty years. A descendant of
English ancestry, he was born in Haddam,
Conn., December 30, 1818, the son of William
Bartlett, who was also a native of that state,
born in East Guilford, and there he followed
farming for a livelihood. In early youth Will-
iam Bartlett, Jr., experienced all the advantages
and disadvantages of New England training on
a farm, and as he had higher ambitions in life
he chafed under the restrictions which held him
in bondage. Hence it was that while still a
young man, in 1850, he removed to what was at
that time considered the west, locating in Day-
ton, Ohio. Previous to this, while on the home
farm, he had exhausted every means for obtain-
ing an education, studying at night by the light
of the pine knots on the hearth, when the day's
work was over. After locating in Ohio he studied
for the ministry under the Rev. Dr. Boynton, a
noted Congregational minister, and later took up
the study of law, receiving his degree of A. B.
from an Ohio college, and that of LL. D. was
conferred on him after he came to California
by a Maryland college. During the early '50s
he was associated in the practice of law with
some of the most prominent men of that time,
among whom were Salmon P. Chase, Alonzo
Taft and other of Ohio's prominent free-soilers.

It was during this period in his career, in
March, 1850, that Mr. Bartlett formed domestic
ties by his marriage with Amelia M. Rounds,
who like himself was of New England parentage,
her birth occurring in Massachusetts. In i860,
on account of the ill-health of his wife, Mr.
Bartlett came to California. Intimation has pre-
viously been made to his inclination toward the
ministry, and upon coming to the west Mr. Bart-
lett yielded to his religious impulses and for
several years filled a pulpit in a Congregational
Church in Nevada City. Still later he held the
pastorate of the Congregational Church at Grass
Valley, and from there went to Santa Cruz,
where for six years he worked with indefatigable
zeal in the cause of Christ and humanity. On
account of an injury to his knee, however, he

was obliged to relinquish this position, as its
duties required considerable activity, owing to the
fact that it was in the midst of a mission field.
Going to San Francisco, he filled a pulpit in that
city for a time, and it was while there, in 1867,
that he became associated with the Evening-

Bulletin as literary editor, remaining on the staff
of that journal for over a quarter of a century.
During this time many of his articles on art and
literature appeared in the columns of this well-
known paper. When the Bulletin changed
hands Dr. Bartlett resigned from the staff and
became associated with the Oakland 'Tribune as
an editorial writer. Throughout his life he had
been a friend of education and in all of his
writings he advocated the need of a university,
and indeed much credit is due him for the estab-
lishment of the University at Berkeley, he being
one of the number chosen to select the site. Up-
on the establishment of the Forestry Department
of the United States government Dr. Bartlett
was chosen to fill a responsible position with
that department, one which he was enabled to
fill creditably for many years by reason of his
extraordinary physical energy. Just before re-
signing his position he rode forty miles a day on
horseback over mountain trails in the perform-
ance of his duties.

Besides the editorial work mentioned Dr. Bart-
lett was the managing editor of the Overland
Monthly at the beginning of its career, and he
also published a volume of essays on outdoor
subjects, entitled "A Breeze from the Woods"
for private circulation, which was a rare treat to
those who were privileged to read it. For many
years he served as chairman of the board of
trustees of the Institute for the Education of the
Deaf and Blind at Berkeley, and also as chair-
man of the board of trustees of Mills College.

It was about the year 1871 that Dr. Bartlett
became identified with Oakland, and in the resi-
dence which he then purchased his death oc-
curred. His was one of the first residences in
that section at the time, the country round about
being an open field. He was a member of the
board of Freeholders that framed the Oakland
charter and took an active part in its proceed-
ings. In February, 1873, at tne suggestion of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

President Gilman of the State University, he
helped to organize the Berkeley Club, and of its
charter members only two are now living, Presi-
dent Gilman and Rev. Dr. McLean. Politically
he was a Republican, though always reserved in
his opinions, and cast his vote for the man best
suited for the position. His qualifications as a
public speaker made his services in great demand,
many of his addresses being of a literary char-
acter, a line in which he was especially qualified.
It was while he was a teacher in the east that
he met the lady that was to become his wife, she
being one of his pupils. She passed away in
California in 1904, at the age of seventy-seven
years. Three children were born of the marriage
of Dr. Bartlett and his wife, but the only one now
living is Albert Lee, who was born in Massa-
chusetts.

HENRY P. DALTON-

One man who has made political history in
California in its relation to methods and princi-
ples of government is Henry P. Dalton, the
assessor of Alameda county. Here and there
are public officials in municipal, county and
state governments who acquire wide reputation
by the manner in which they stamp their indi-
vidualities on their official careers, by the bold-
ness and strength of character they display, by
their conceptions of their official powers and
of their official duties to the people, and by the
loyalty they display to those conceptions. The
assessor comes closer to the interests of the
people in his direct official capacity than any
other official, for it is he who apportions the
financial burdens of government, and upon his
honesty and competency and upon his concep-
tions of right and justice, depend the apportion-
ment of those burdens.

Mr. Dalton has shown how much an assessor
can do to correct the habitual injustices of prop-
erty assessment. His ideas and plan of proced-
ure have been discussed in every newspaper in
California. They are without precedent, and

what he has done is unparalleled in the history
of assessments. His ideas and what he has ac-
complished cannot be described in detail here,
but, in brief, he has achieved brilliant BUCO
after long battling, in his plan of lowering as-
sessments on residence and other property pro-
ducing no income and assessing corporate ami
other property according to income produced by
it. Rich corporations were made to pay taxes on
the basis of their income and resources and the\
stoutly resisted this new but wholly just plan
of assessing property; but the courts fully sus-
tained Assessor Dalton in making his as-
sessment roll look so unlike those of his
predecessors.

The man who achieved this important and
wide-reaching victory is a native son of Cali-
fornia yet in the prime of young manhood. 1 [e
was born in Tuolumne county, but has lived in
Oakland for about thirty years. Here he was
educated and here as a young man he began his
business career with his father by entering the
firm of Henry Dalton and Sons Company, manu-
facturers of agricultural machinery. After a feu
years of this business experience he took an
active interest in public affairs in the community
in which he was widely known, and in 1893 he
was elected a member of the city council from
the first ward.

PTis success as a public official was instant an- 1
continued. The innate qualities which have
given him distinction and success at once ap-
peared at the front. He displayed marked exec
utive ability, which stamped him as a leader,
and his aggressive and unrelenting stand
against every form of municipal wrong and un-
due corporate influences, and his loyalty to the
best public interests, at once gave him fame and
popularity. He gained not only popularity, but
general confidence and esteem, for with his bold
and uncompromising policy against whatever he
believed to be wrong he united good judqmcnt
and complete fair-mindedness. The popul.iritv
with the masses of the people which he gained
thus in one short year is shown by the fact that
when in 1894 he went into the field as an inde-
pendent candidate for county assessor he WSJ
elected by an overwhelming majority.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

beth, a student of Miss Head's School for Girls;
and Delphina, a student in the Berkeley high
school. Mr. Ferrier is a stanch advocate of Re-
publican principles, but has never sought offi-
cial recognition, all honors of this nature having
been proffered him. In fraternal relations he
is a member, of Durant Lodge No. 268,
F. & A. M. ; Berkeley Chapter, R. A. M. ; a life
member of Oakland Commandery No. II, K. T. ;
Islam Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S., and is also a
member of Oakland Lodge No. 171, B. P. O. E.
Mr. Ferrier is esteemed alike for his personal
characteristics and the manner in which he has
performed his duties as a loyal and patriotic
citizen, and in all the communities where he has
made his home he has enjoyed a respected posi-
tion among the representative men.

MRS. SARAH WORCESTER DEMING.

Prominent among the pioneer women of Cali-
fornia is Mrs. Sarah Worcester Deming, a resi-
dent of Oakland for many years and one of its
most esteemed inhabitants. She is a descendant
of two prominent families of New England, born
in Hardwick, Vt., November 17, 1832, a daugh-
ter of John Fox, and granddaughter of John Fox,
Sr.. descendants of the family of Lord Charles
Fox of England, an associate of William Pitt in
the House of Lords. John Fox, Sr., was a Revo-
lutionary soldier, enlisted from Dracut, Mass.,
in 1775, served under Captain Coburn, Col. E.
Bridges' regiment of the Massachusetts line,
eight months at Cambridge ; again enlisted in
1776, under Capt. John Ford, Col. Jonathan
Reed's regiment, five months at Ticonderoga ;
again enlisted, 1777, serving three years in Capt.
James Varnum's company, Col. Michael Jack-
son's regiment of the Massachusetts line, on the
continental establishment in General Learned's
brigade. He was discharged at West Point, N. Y.,
March 31, 1780. In 1782 he married Sarah Wor-
cester, the daughter of Noah Worcester and the
aunt of Joseph Emerson Worcester, who com-

piled the Worcester dictionary. She was a oon
tributor to the "Herald of Freedom," published
in Concord, N. H., and also the anti-slavery or-
gan, "The Liberator," published by William
Lloyd Garrison, of whom she was a personal
friend, as well as Henry C. Wright, of anti-
slavery fame. She had five brothers, all of whom
were ministers in the Congregational church, and
literary men. The eldest brother, who was pastor
of the Tabernacle church, Salem, Mass., was one
of the founders of the American Board of For-
eign Missions, and its first secretary. In 171)4,
when sixty-three years of age, John Fox, Sr.,
applied for a pension and was granted SS per
month. In March, 1818, he was dropped from
the rolls, as he was found to have too much prop-
erty, then valued at $461.90. In August, 18.23,
he applied for reinstatement, but was not re-
stored to the rolls until 1829. He died in 1X41
and his wife in 1850. John Fox, Jr., was a sol-
dier in and a pensioner of the war of 181 2. serv-
ing in the Thirty-fourth regiment. United States
Infantry, under Capt. Daniel Crossman. He WZS
born in Oroton, N. H., and died in California at
the home of his daughter, Mrs. Deming. at the
age of seventy-seven years. He is the only vet-
eran of the war of 181 2 that lies buried in Moun-
tain View Cemetery.

Sarah Worcester Fox received her education in
the common and select schools of the day. as did
the others of her father's large family. He had
been married twice, having seven children by his
first marriage and seven by his second, his second
wife being in maidenhood Eleanor Brewer. Go-
ing to New Hampshire in young girlhooil. Sarah
W. Fox made her home there until her marriage,
which took place May 15. 1855, m Lowell. MaSfl
and united her with John A. A. Wilson. He mfl
a native of New Brunswick, and a merchant tailor
of Boston, and in Lawrence. Mass.. he followed
that occupation for some time after his marriage.
Mrs. Wilson had some friends who had come t"
California and the glowing reports they sent back-
so fired her with enthusiasm that she persuaded
her husband to come west. This they did bv wa\
of the Isthmus of Panama and arrived in San
Francisco December 11. 1859. and there Mr. Wil-
son took up his trade. They remained reti '

354

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

of that city until February I, 1864, when they
removed to Oakland, and Mr. Wilson remained
unoccupied until his death, March 13, 1865. He
invested in property, becoming the owner of two
hundred feet on Washington street, where they
built their home.

In October, 1868, Mrs. Wilson became the wife
of John D. Deming, a native of New Haven,
Conn., who had come to California in an early
day, via the Isthmus of Panama, to accept a posi-
tion with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company,
remaining witb them for years in various capaci-
ties. Mrs. Deming erected the first brick build-
ing on Twelfth street, between Washington and
Broadway, retaining the property for years. She
purchased her present home in June, 1893, being
the pioneer of the district in the neighborhood of
Hardwick and Worcester avenues, where she im-
proved a handsome and substantial residence.
Mr. and Mrs. Deming became the parents of two
daughters, both born in the home on Twelfth
street. Inez F. was educated in the Willard
school of Chicago ; and Sarah W. Haynes, of
Oakland, was educated in Miss L. Tracy's school,
"The Oaks," of Oakland. She has two daugh-
ters, Florence W. and M. Dorothy. After the
death of her first husband, Mrs. Deming's father
came to California and made his home with her
until his death, he being then seventy-seven years
old. She owns considerable property, both im-
proved and unimproved, in Oakland, and also in
Niles, Ca!., her daughter Inez also owning in the
latter place, while she has a beautiful home at
Pacific Grove for summer occupancy. Mrs. Dem-
ing has traveled extensively throughout Califor-
nia and the Pacific coast, and has crossed the con-
tinent eight times, is well read, and thoroughly-
informed on topics of the day. She takes a keen
interest in everything pertaining to the pioneer
days of the state, in which, as the wife of sturdy
upbuilders of the west, she played an important
part. She is also interested in the collection of
antiques, and has a large collection of minerals,
Indian baskets and miscellaneous curios from va-
rious parts of the world. She is a member of the
National Daughters of the Revolution at Wash-
ington, D. C. ; the National Geographical So-
ciety ; member of Oak Leaf Chapter, Order of the

Eastern Star of Oakland ; member of Appomat-
tox Corps, No. 5, W. R. C, in which she has
held various offices ; and was a delegate in 1892
to the convention in Washington, D. C. ; also be-
longs to the Independent Order of Good Temp-
lars and affiliates with its grand lodge, having
taken a keen interest in all temperance move-
ments, and was formerly associated with the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union. She has
been liberal in fostering all charities of her city,
particularly supporting those of the First Congre-
gational church of Oakland, of which she is a
member, having formerly belonged to the First
Congregational church of San Francisco. No one
is better versed in the pioneer history of the city,
county and state, and to her credit, be it said, no
one lends her aid toward preserving historical
data in more complete measure than she. She
has long occupied a high position in the citizen-
ship of Oakland, and until the close of her jour-
ney here on earth she will be revered and admired
for her womanhood, her Christian character and
the generosity of all wherewith she has been
blessed.

WILLIAM G. BARRETT.

One of the most esteemed of the citizens who
helped to make San Francisco and the bay coun-
try of California what it is to-day, is the late
William G. Barrett, who came as a pioneer to
the state and for more than a half century as-
sisted in its upbuilding and development. Mr.
Barrett was the descendant of an old New Eng-
land family, born in Chester, Vt., December 12,
1822, a son of Thomas T. and Nancy (Gront)
Barrett, natives respectively of Vermont and
New Hampshire, of Welsh and English extrac-
tion. The maternal grandfather, a native of
Vermont, was a colonel in the Revolutionary
war. Mr. Barrett's father was a physician and
farmer, who spent his entire life in Chester,
where he became a man of influence and stand-
ing.

William Gront Barrett attended the public

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

schools of his native state and also an academy,
then completed his education in New Hampshire,
after which he engaged in teaching for a time.
He finally went to New York City and there
found employment as a clerk in a commission
house on Broad street, continuing so occupied
until his location in Lake Geneva, Wis., where
with friends he engaged in the management of a
hotel. The glowing reports of the wealth of
California turned his attention still further west-
ward and in 1850, with a friend, H. Smith, he
came across the plains with the Oregon mail,
being two months en route. After their arrival
in Sacramento Mr. Barrett went to Feather river
and began mining operations, but not meeting
with success shortly afterward returned to the
city and secured a clerkship in a mercantile
establishment. There he continued until i860,
in which year he first located permanently in
San Francisco, here securing employment with
the San Francisco Gas Company as its collector.
Two years later he was made cashier and general
bookkeeper of the San Francisco Gas Light Com-
pany, while in 1877 he was elected secretary and
treasurer, holding this position through the
various mergings and successive ownership of
the San Francisco lighting interests until 1902,
when he was retired as secretary emeritus of the
San Francisco Gas & Electric Company. When
the Pacific Coast Gas Association was formed
July 11, 1893, Mr. Barrett was its fourth charter
member, and on July 16, 1902, he was unanimous-
ly elected an honorary member of the sama. Dur-
ing these years he was a constant attendant of
the meetings of the association, and although not
an active participant in the discussion, yet his
genial and kindly presence was always a benefit
to those upon whom the responsibility rested.

Mr. Barrett was one of the early members of
the old Union Club, and afterward the Pacific
Union as well as of the Bohemian Club of San
Francisco. He was a Republican in his political
convictions, although never being active along
these lines beyond giving his vote toward the
establishment and maintenance of good govern-
ment. He was a genial, kindly natured man, al-
ways ready to extend a helping hand to those
less fortunate than himself, and to his employes

356

was ever ready with a word of encouragement or
praise.

Mr. Barrett was twice married, his first wife
being Miss Sarah Sherman, a native of Massa-
chusetts and a pioneer of California, and born
of this union were three children, Charles 1...
who succeeded his father in his position with the
gas company, is married and has two sons;
Saretta is the wife of Stetson (j. Hindes. of
San Francisco, and Mora Moss died at the agC
of thirty-six years, leaving a wife and daughter.
June 4, 1883, Mr. Barrett was united in mar-
riage with Miss Clara A. Brosius, a native of
California and daughter of William I., and
Zerelda Ruth (Osborn) Brosius, who were
pioneers of the state in 1853, crossing the plains
amid all the hardships and perils of that early
day. The father is deceased, while the mother
has since become the wife of J. V. Hunter of
San Francisco. In spite of many hardships and
privations in early life she is still hale and hearty
at the age of seventy-three years. She had eight
children, of whom the only survivor i- Mr>.
Barrett. Mr. and Mrs. Barrett first resided in
San Francisco, on Taylor between Sutter and
Bush streets, after which they sold and bought a
home on the northwest corner of Pine and Taylor
streets. This they gave to their daughter in
1886, and going to Sausalito built another home,
residing there until after the earthquake, when
they purchased the property now occupied by the
widow at No. 505 Vernon avenue. Oakland.

JAMES EDGAR FOWLER.

Although a resident of Oakland for the past
eighteen years the greater part of the life of
James Edgar Fowler spent in California has beefl
passed in Sonoma countv. where he is commonly
known as the "father of Valley Ford." where
with his brother. Stephen L. Fowler, since de-
ceased, he erected the first dwelling in that lo-
cality in the month of July. 1852. Mr. Fowler is
one of the pioneer settlers of California who can

356

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

trace his ancestry in America back to the old
colonial days, when a narrow stretch of settle-
ment along the Atlantic coast constituted the only
signs of civilization on the North American con-
tinent. A hundred years before the Declaration
of Independence announced the birth of these
United States, the ancestors of Mr. Fowler were
counted among the worthy citizens of the New
England colonies. His father, Stephen Cornell
Fowler, born in Lakeville, Queens county, Long
Island, on January 3, 1797, served with the
militia in the war of 1812 and took part in the
defense of New York City and vicinity.

Born in New York City, December 28, 1828,
James Edgar Fowler was the fourth in a family
of ten children. He received a public school
education, after which he learned the business
of builder, which occupation had been followed
by his father. Upon hearing of the first dis-
covery of gold in California, Mr. Fowler, then
just twenty years of age, left New York City, in
company with his elder brother, Stephen L., on
the American ship Brooklyn, carrying two hun-
dred and five passengers around Cape Horn to
the unknown regions of the new Eldorado. After
a four months' voyage they reached the island of
Juan Fernandez and visited the cave and home
of Alexander Selkirk, the hero of the story of
Robinson Crusoe. At the end of a seven months'
voyage, after a narrow escape from shipwreck
and suffering from scurvy and a short supply of
water, they finally reached San Francisco on the
12th of August, 1849. Mr- Fowler and his
brother immediately found work as carpenters
at $12 per day, but sbortly branched out as con-
tractors on their own responsibility and erected
several frame buildings in the vicinity of Clay
and Montgomery streets, and assisted in the lay-
ing of the foundation of the first brick building
erected in San Francisco. Later in the year the
two brothers started for the mining country, tak-
ing six days to reach Sacramento by boat, and
from there going to Drytown, Amador county.
They returned to San Francisco immediately
after the great fire, when the work of rebuilding
offered large returns for their labor, but found
that the limited field had been filled by those
nearer the scene of activity. They, however.

erected a few buildings for Sam Brannan, after
which, February i? 1850, they left for Marys-
ville and afterward for Downieville, at the great
Gold Lake excitement.

An attack of fever and ague induced Mr. Fow-
ler to give up his mining ventures, and from this
time on he was identified with the interests of
Sonoma county. In the early part of 1852 he pur-
chased of Frederick G. Blume, who had come to
California in 1842, a tract of six hundred and
forty acres of land, and here erected the first
house of what finally became the settlement of
V alley Ford. Sonoma county is one of the most
beautiful spots in California, with fifty miles of
rugged coast line extending from the Estaro
Americano to the Gualala river, which includes
the harbor of Bodega, Fort Ross and several
chutes where vessels may lie at anchor and re-
ceive cargoes of lumber, tan bark, cordwood,
posts, pickets and other products of the country ;
its wide, beautiful and fertile valleys, productive
for all agricultural purposes, its grand forests
and high rolling hills, altogether forming a di-
versified picture of the multifold charms of the
state.

Sonoma county remained the home of Mr.
Fowler for many years, while his father, mother
and the remainder of the family followed him
to the state and also dwelt here to the end of
their days. In 1857, while on a visit to the east,
Mr. Fowler was married, August 19, to Miss
Charlotte E. Palmer, of Morris county, N. J.,
returning shortly afterward to California, where
he has been engaged ever since in farming, mer-
cantile pursuits and mining, and is to-day enjoy-
ing the best of health at the ripe age of eighty
years. He is properly classed among the portion
of the early pioneers who were the actual foun-
ders and builders of the state of their adoption.
He has seen the state grow from a sparsely
settled waste, given over to the excitement and
uncertainties of mining and frontier life, to one
of the most advanced and attractive communities
in America, the garden spot of the country, and
in this work no citizen has been more active in
every avenue where his help could be given. He
was a stanch and loval patriot at the time of the
Civil war, and although the section was largely

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

southern in sympathy he did not allow this to
deter him from putting aloft the American flag
on a seventy-foot pole on top of his store at
every Union victory. He was always interested
in church and charitable movements, having
erected a hall which he deeded to the Good Temp-
lars. He takes a keen interest in the events of
the early days, having been a member of the
California Pioneer Society since 1890. Mr. Fow-
ler makes his home with his daughter, Mrs. Lot-
tie B., wife of M. B. Merritt, of Oakland, where
he is rounding out the years of a well spent
manhood, looking back without regret over the
events of the past years, and forward without
fear to that which awaits him in the great beyond,
in consciousness of duty performed wherever met.
August 19, 1907, Mr. and Mrs. Fowler cele-
brated their golden wedding anniversary in Oak-
land.

NICHOLAS LUNING.

Among the pioneers of '49 the name of Nicho-
las Luning should have place, for though he has
now passed on to the lights and shadows of the
great beyond, the part he played in the citizen-
ship of a new country justly gives him rank
among its representative men. Mr. Luning came
by inheritance to the sterling traits of character
which were distinguishable in his career, being
a native of Germany, born March 31, 1820.
There he received his education and began a
commercial career, when the news of the gold
discovery in California attracted the attention
of the world to that quarter of the globe. Mr.
Luning was in nowise different from the rest,
and it was not long before he found himself a
resident of San Francisco, and here he at once
began business, which he continued through-
out the remainder of his life. He engaged in
various lines, spending some time in the mines
and meeting with his accustomed success. He
rapidly acquired a fortune and as an evidence
of his great faith in the future of California he
invested heavilv in this section of the state.

Among the enterprises with which he wa> iden-
tified was the California Bank, in which he nraa
a director, and the Contra Costa Water Compam ,
of Oakland, a coal mine in Coos county, < )re..
as well as others of equal importance. Although
he remained a citizen of the Fatherland he was
a very liberal contributor to all public move-
ments in San Francisco, and indeed no citizen
could have better filled his part. An evidence
of the esteem in which he was held was shown
at the time of his death, when all flags in San
Francisco were placed at half-mast.

In San Francisco Mr. Luning was married to
Miss Ellen Dempsey, who was born in Ireland,
brought to America in childhood, and from New
York City came to California, where her death
occurred in 1865. They became the parents
of the following children : Agnes, who was mar-
ried and died in Philadelphia; Anna L. wife of
George Whittell ; Ellen A., wife of George S.
Fife ; Nicholas, who died at the age of twent\ -
six years; John N., a resident of New York:
Oscar T., of Oakland; and Clara, wife of
Athearn Folger. All were born in San Francisco
but reared in Dresden. Germany, the father hav-
ing traveled extensively over Europe and tt
pecially in his native land. In San Francis-.,
they made their home in the Palace hotel, hav-
ing taken up their residence there before the hotel
was quite finished, and there Mr. Luning pn>-< <l
his life to the time of his demise in August,
1890.

Oscar T. Luning, the youngest son in the
family of his parents, was born in San FranciWfO,
but at the age of six years was taken to Ger-
many, and remained abroad from 1867 to 1889.
Everv advantage educationally was given him
and he profited by them. After returning to
America he spent one year in Sonoma count \.
then a brief time in San Jose, after which he
returned to Europe. Returning to California he
has been identified with Oakland since the year
1893. and in 1901 he purchased a home at Mo
3855 Telegraph avenue, where he has since re-
sided. He has been busy looking after hifl
various interests, which suffered heavilv in the
San Francisco disaster. Tie married Marie
Philippe, of French birth, and they have one <on.

360

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Nicholas T., who was born in Geneva, Switzer-
land, in which country their home was located
for a time. Mr. Liming is a member of the
Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and also
a member of Piedmont Parlor, N. S. G. W. He
takes an active interest in matters of public im-
port and can always be counted upon to further
any plan advanced for the betterment of the
general community.

WILLIAM H. HILTON.

The descendants of the Hilton family in Amer-
ica are inheritors of patriotic blood, for since the
early colonial days in our history the name has
been a prominent one for the wars for independ-
ence, supremacy and preservation. Both of Mr.
Hilton's grandfathers, William Hilton and Ed-
ward Shonnard, were soldiers in the Revolution-
ary war, while his father, William Hilton, held a
colonel's commission in the war of 1812, and was
presented with a sword for gallantry by his regi-
ment on his promotion. His son, William H.
Hilton, served in the Mexican war, 1846-1848,
under Col. Jack Hays, in Captains Sam Walker's
and in Ben McCulloch's companies. He also
served in the Civil war in the Twenty-third Ohio
Regiment, entering it as a private, and was in
time promoted captain, and transferred to another
regiment. He was very severely wounded at the
battle of Shenandoah, left for dead, but finally
sent to the New York hospital, where he re-
mained for over six months and was discharged
with badly impaired health.

William H. Hilton was born in New York City,
March 27, 1827, a son of William Hilton, a na-
tive of the state of New York, born March 16,
1777, and Matilda Shonnard Hilton, of Yonkers,
N. Y. The father was a personal friend of Gen.
Winfield Scott, with whom he served in the war
of 1 81 2. The son spent his youth in New York
and Brooklyn at school, also at a private boarding
school at White Plains, Westchester county,
where a brutal, undeserved thrashing by the prin-

cipal caused him to leave home. He had the
best of parents, but being of a sensitive nature,
the undeserved beating by the teacher worried
him and caused a change in his career. In 1844,
then seventeen years of age, he left New York
City, on the M. B. Lamar, for Galveston, Tex.
As the yellow fever was prevalent there he left
for Houston, and there got employment as a sales-
man. Upon the breaking out of the war with
Mexico, he enlisted in Capt. Sam Walker's com-
pany, participating in the battles of Palo Alto,
Resaca de la Palma and Monterey, and the com-
pany was there discharged, being six months'
men. He then joined Capt. Ben McCulloch's
Texas Rangers (with Col. Jack Hays' regiment),
and was in the battle of Buena Vista, under Gen-
eral Taylor's command. The Col. Jack Hays'
regiment was then transferred to Gen. Winfield
Scott's command, and was ordered to Tampico,
thence to Vera Cruz, and greatly aided in keeping
the road to the City of Mexico free from guer-
rillas, and guarding the ammunition and provis-
ion trains, also the important duty of scouting
ahead of the army. Three times he was se-
lected to carry dispatches from Pueblo to General
Scott, at the City of Mexico ; others with dupli-
cates were also sent, each to take his own route;
too many never reported, being killed bv the
guerrillas. After two years and two months' ser-
vices he was honorably discharged, when he re-
turned to Texas and became clerk in a small store
in the new town of Austin, and was appointed
deputy sheriff under James Irwin, who was also
a veteran of the Mexican war.

In 1849 Mr. Hilton came to California, around
Cape Horn in the ship Panama, and from San
Francisco went to the Yuba river to mine, made a
small raise and started freighting to the mines,
both by wagon and pack mule trains. Later he
sold out and engaged in buying bands of cattle
and horses in the lower counties, and disposed of
them in the northern mines. He had purchased
an interest in the old Grass Valley mine, and, as
he had also been studying mining "on horse back
and at camp fires," he concluded to devote his
attention to mining and to get a better knowl-
edge of it, went to work in the Grass Valley mine
and "earned his wages." He had made money

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

361

and decided to go home, and went to San Fran-
cisco. The firm of Bolton, Barron & Co., with
whom he had banked, induced him to go to Chili
to settle some business there. After accomplish-
ing it the firm to whom he was consigned, offered
him the position of superintendent of a rich gold
and copper mine, worked by Auricanian Indians.
He then went to Peru and was with Harry
Meiggs on the survey of the railroad from Mol-
lendo to Arequipa. He returned to California in
1863, and went east to enlist on the Union side
as a private during the Civil war, and was pro-
moted captain of a company. In the battle of
Spottsylvania he was severely wounded by a shell
and was carried from the field apparently dead,
but recovering consciousness he was finally taken
to the New York hospital, where he remained
about six months. Partially recovering his health
he returned to California and was appointed sup-
erintendent of the Chollar mine at Virginia City,
Nev., during the bonanza days, then went to
Mexico to take charge of the San Sebastian
mines. While thus engaged he was taken with
the Mexican coast malarial fever, while making
a survey of the bay of Jaltembra, to have vessels
come there to take ores to Swansea, Wales. He
finally had to resign his position, owing to broken
health, and returned to San Francisco. When
partly recovered he bought a rancho of one hun-
dred and fifty acres, in Sonoma county, and plant-
ed wine and table grapes, also had a fine orchard,
and continued to improve the property for about
sixteen years. He then sold out, owing to im-
paired health, caused by old wounds, etc., and
bought property in Berkeley, where he has lived
retired.

Mr. Hilton married Mary Virginia Glasgow,
formerly of Baltimore, Md., and they had one
son, William Halsted, who died in 1901. He was
a graduate of the University of California, in the
mining and chemistry class, where he was held
in high esteem, not only by his associates, but by
President Wheeler and the faculty, having been
appointed by President Wheeler as a member of
the faculty in the mining department, which posi-
tion he held at the time of his death, greatly la-
mented. William H. Hilton in a stanch Repub-
lican in his political convictions. He is now in

his eighty-second year, has poor health, but has
courage left to get all the good he can out >>\
life. He has lived a temperate life in every re-
spect, although much of his life has been passed
in the army and in the mining camps. Like- many
others who struck out in their youth his life has
been one of hardship, and he has seen life in
varied forms, as a poor man and as one comfort-
ably well off. He has many interesting reminis-
cences of the early day life in Texas in 1844. of
war times, and the '40 days of California, and is
an entertaining companion, who numbers friends
wherever he has been known. He is one of those
truly great men who helped to make the great
west, and too little can be said in this short sketch.

During the war with Mexico the Texas Rang-
ers scouted over the country so much they also
became valuable as dispatch Ixarers, and as here-
inbefore stated, he was sent three times from
Pueblo and Japala. with dispatches to den. Scott
at the City of Mexico, with other dispatch bear-
ers, each to take his own route : too many 1- >st
their lives by guerrillas. Once he was severely
wounded, but got through. Later on in New
York City, while calling with his father on Gen-
eral Scott, he recognized him and kindly gave
him a letter of introduction to General Persifcr
F. Smith, commanding in California. This let-
ter he was unable to present, and has as a valued
relic. It is dated January 23, 1840. and highly
recommends Mr. Hiltrn for courage and other
moral attributes. Mr. Milton is a member of the
1849 Pioneer Society of California, secretary of
the Association of Veterans of the Mexican War.
also a member of the Texas Association of Vet-
erans of the Mexican War. and a member and
second vice-president of the Sloat Monument V-
sociation.

DARWIX DrGOLTA.

An investigation of the records of the DeGoSa
family shows that it flourished in the north of
Italv as early as 1362. but subsequent genera-
tions lived and died in France. In 1780 the

362

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

nobility of France were compelled to flee for
safety into other parts of the world, and among
those who left for England was Marquis Georges
deGolier. From London he went to Montreal,
Canada, but in 1791 he crossed over into the
United States and in what was then known as
West Fort Ann, on the shores of Lake George,
New York, purchased a homestead and in due
time became an American citizen. So thoroughly
imbued did he become with the true American
spirit of his adopted country that he ignored and
avoided everything French, even to anglicizing
his name by spelling it Degolyer. He married
into the well-known Rensselaer family of Troy,
N. Y., and among the children born to them was
John, the father of Darwin DeGolia. His mar-
riage united him with a family also well known
in the east, Mrs. DeGolia being in maidenhood
Abbie Kronkhite, of Albany, N. Y.

By reason of an investigation made in an
effort to recover the family estate in France that
had been confiscated by the French government
because the marquis was a refugee, it was de-
termined about 1840 that the French family
deGolier originally came from the north of Italy,
where the records were traced back to 1362 and
the family name was spelled deGolia. After
these investigations the young Californian, Dar-
win DeGolia, changed his anglicized name of
Degolyer back to the original family name of
deGolia, and spelled it with a large D, but kept
the distinctive large G, and many of the other de-
scendants of the marquis throughout the United
States have made the same change.

On the old family homestead at West Fort
Ann, N. Y., Darwin DeGolia was born in 1818.
and in the vicinity of his birthplace he was reared
and educated. Flis training had been such as to
prepare him for the teacher's profession and lie
followed this calling until caught by the gold
fever, when at the age of thirty-one he came to
California by way of Panama, arriving in San
Francisco in June, 1850, and going directly to the
mines. He first sluiced for gold near Coloma,
where Marshall first found the yellow dust that
made his name famous, and from there he drifted
into Hangtown (now Placerville), then the third
largest town in California and the county-seat of

Eldorado county. In the history of that famous
mining center of early days the name of Darwin
DeGolia will always be cited as one of its prom-
inent and leading factors, he taking an active and
interested part in all that transpired in that live
community. He was one of the leaders that
sent Stephen T. Gage to the state legislature in
1855. It was during the following year that
he met and married Lavinia W. Baldwin, who
had crossed the plains with relatives in the fall
of 1855, making the journey by way of Truckee
Pass, with Hangtown as their destination.

The troublous times between the north and
the south which preceded the breaking out of the
Civil war were felt and conditions discussed in
the bustling community of Hangtown and sides
taken. In June, 1856, eight men met, each heav-
ily armed for protection, and organized the Re-
publican or Fremont party in Eldorado county.
At the head of this delegation was Col. William
Jones, a veteran of the Mexican war, and among
the number were Darwin DeGolia and two
brothers of his wife, George and David Bald-
win. As the southern sympathizers were numer-
ous and very aggressive they did everything in
their power to force public sentiment in favor of
establishing an independent government in Cali-
fornia. As a result of this intense feeling mur-
ders were frequent and it needed strong men
as well as brave men to hold public office. The
better element selected James B. Home (for many
years afterwards at the head of the Wells-Fargo
detective force) as sheriff, and Mr. Home ap-
pointed Darwin DeGolia and George Baldwin as
two of his deputies. Their positions in this ca-
pacity were no sinecures to say the least, for
they found all they could do in capturing and
punishing the many criminals to be found in the
mining camps. During i860 Mr. DeGolia took a
prominent part in the efforts then being made
to subdue the widespread agitation in favor of
having the state join the south and secede from
the Union. During this time he made the ac-
quaintance of many prominent men of the state,
among them Leland Stanford, with whom his
friendship continued until his death. In 1863
Mr. DeGolia assumed control of the Placerville
Republican, the principal Republican newspaper

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

of that time north of Sacramento, of which lie
was the head for many years. He was strongly
in favor of placing his friend Stanford in the
gubernatorial chair, and urged his nomination and
election upon every occasion. Mr. DeGolia held
a prominent place in the civic life of Placerville
until 1873, when he removed with his family to
Oakland, where his useful and eventful career
came to a close in 1889.

All of the four children born to the marriage of
Darwin DeGolia and his wife are living in Oak-
land, the eldest of whom is George E., of whom
a sketch will be found elsewhere in this volume.

DR. F. F. JACKSON.

Since locating in Oakland, Dr. Jackson has
taken a prominent part in the public affairs of
the city, being active in its commercial life, as
well as its professional and political. He was
born in Caledonia, Ontario, Canada, in 1867,
receiving his preliminary education in the public
schools of that city. He then took up the study
of pharmacy, and in the year 1886 came to Cali-
fornia, establishing himself in the drug busi-
ness in Oakland, and at present is the proprie-
tor of two of the leading drug stores in the
city. His researches in chemistry enabled him to
perfect the Chicago Boiler Compound, which is
manufactured bv the Chicago Chemical Company,
a company of which he is president and in which
he is one of the principal stockholders.

The success which followed his business enter-
prises enabled him to take up the study of medi-
cine, which had been his aim for years, and in
1899 he matriculated in medicine at the College of
Physicians & Surgeons of San Francisco. He
received his degree four years later, and passing
the examination of the California State Board of
Medical Examiners in the same year, took up
the practice of medicine in his home city.

Progressive and up-to-date. Dr. Jackson keeps
abreast of everv advancement in the theory and
practice of medicine, and through his spirit of

progression has already won a wide patronage.
He is a member of the Alameda County Medical
Society, State Medical, and American Medical
Associations. He is prominent in social and club
life, and has been honored fraternally in the
societies to which he belongs ; he is a Past Noble
Grand of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
Past Wise Master of Knights Rose Croix, a
Scottish Rite Mason of the thirty-second degree,
a Noble of the Mystic Shrine, and a Knight
Commander, Court of Honor, at Washinirton
D. C.

For many years Dr. Jackson has taken a keen
interest in municipal affairs and in 1907 u.i-
elected as councilman at large a member of the
city council. As chairman of the wharves and
water front committee, he immediately took steps
to improve the immense water front of the city,
appreciating the great commercial possibilities of
his city if deep water dockage was secured. He
entered upon the task with the same zeal that
characterized his private enterprises, and suc-
ceeded in overcoming corporate and political in-
fluences, and in having adopted plans for the im-
provement of the water front involving the ex-
penditure of $25,000,000. Oakland's transition
from a city of residences to a commercial citv
will be due largely to the efforts of Dr. Jackson,
in securing for her the water front that has born
held from her for generations. He was father of
the ordinance to establish children's public play-
grounds in the city, and his entire public record,
although short, shows that he is a man of large
ideas and progressive spirit.

DON ANTONIO SUNOL.

California will always retain the influence upon
it of the Spanish race in the characteristic* of its
inhabitants, and the names of the old families will
never be forgotten, for thev are planted all ovrr
the state, not only in the individual representa-
tives of the families, but in their adoption a« title*
for cities, counties, street*, etc.. and the descend-

366

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ants of these families also retain ownership of
some of the finest properties of the state. Don
Antonio Sunol was born in Barcelona, Spain,
June 13, 1797, and at the age of eight years was
taken to France by a French general and there
educated. Surrounded by this training and influ-
ence it is a matter of no surprise that he drifted
into the service of the navy and when only a
mere youth he had passed through experiences
and perils on the sea that would have daunted the
courage of many old sailors who had spent their
lives on the seas. Off the coast of Africa the
transport on which he was making the trip was
shipwrecked, and out of six hundred men com-
prising the troops, only nineteen were saved.
From Algeria, where the troops had been sent to
settle a difficulty, the remainder of the men pro-
ceeded south, rounding Cape Horn and proceed-
ing north on the Pacific ocean to Lima, Peru,
where a revolution was in progress. From there
they went to Mexico, landing in 1816, and in the
same year he proceeded still further north until
he reached Monterey, Cal. Here he found him-
self absolutely penniless, and in order to provide
the necessaries of life he parted with the braids of
his hair for an ounce of gold, worth $20, a part
of which he invested in lace. With this as his sole
stock in trade he again went to Mexico to sell it,
and with the proceeds he bought fine Mexican
shawls and took them to Peru to sell.

Returning to Monterey, Mr. Sunol turned his
attention to dealing in furs, and for this purpose
went to Sitka, Alaska, remaining there in the in-
terests of this business for some time. Some of
his goods he sold in Mexico, also sent some to
Europe, besides dealing to some extent with the
Hudson Bay Company. Subsequently Mr. Sunol
located in California and in San Jose as early as
1818 started the first store established in the town.
A variety of goods comprised his stock, among
them, sugar, brandy and soap, besides which he
carried calico, which in that clay sold for $1.50 a
yard, and red bandana handkerchiefs, which were
worth $16 a dozen. All of the commodities which
he handled he manufactured himself, among
which may be enumerated shoes, clothes, soap and
candles, and he also established a grist mill, mak-
ing it possible for the settlers to have their grist

ground when they came to town to make their
purchases. In 1826 he was appointed the first
postmaster in San Jose. In 1850 he purchased
what was known as the Los Coches rancho from
the Indians for $500. In the meantime he con-
tinued his merchandising business, expanding- it
as the times demanded, and besides furnishing
the American troops with supplies, also supplied
necessities to the miners. No one in the commun-
ity was more thoroughly trusted or loved than
Mr. Sunol, and his safe— a large redwood box —
was the receptacle in which much of the gold dust
of the Mexicans and Indians was kept for safe-
keeping. At times Mr. Sunol had in his posses-
sion as much as $3,000,000. In 1852 he sold out
his business interests and thereafter lived retired.
Subsequently he was appointed superfacto under
the Mexican government, a position which corres-
ponded to that of superior judge in this country.
The Spanish, French and Mexican flags floated
over his home, which was the headquarters for
those various consuls, and he himself was the ad-
visor of the governors sent from Mexico. As a
partial compensation for the efficient services
which he had rendered the Mexican government
he received a grant of twelve thousand acres of
land. The portion which he received was one
quarter of the entire grant, the remainder going
to his three brothers-in-law, who were soldiers in
the Mexican army. Mr. Sunol devoted his land
to the raising of horses and cattle, and at his
death it fell to his seven living children and their
families, only three of whom are living at this
writing. One-third of this tract, however, he
gave to General Nagle to assist him in fighting off
the squatters. He also had some lots in Sacra-
mento which he had taken from Sutter in pay-
ment for some cattle.

Mr. Sunol passed away at his home in San Jose
in 1865, mourned by the many friends and asso-
ciates who had been drawn to him by his tender,
sympathetic nature. He built the first Catholic
church in San Jose, St. Joseph's, employing about
one hundred and fifty Indians to make the adobe
bricks, he himself superintending the erection of
the building. His marriage in 1823 united him
with Dolores Bernal, a descendant of one of the
old and well-known families of San Jose, who re-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

367

sided on the Santa Teresa rancho. Of the seven
children born of this marriage we mention the fol-
lowing: Paula became the wife of P. Sansevain,
and at her death at the age of seventy-five left two
children. Jose met an accidental death at the
hands of a squatter, with whom he was in dis-
pute concerning the lines bounding grant lands
in 1855 ; he was married and left three children.
Incarnacion became the wife of P. Etchebarne,
and is the mother of four daughters and one son.
Jose N. during his boyhood was sent to France

j to be educated and after five years of training re-
turned to San Jose, Cal., and became his father's
right-hand man in the care and management of

1 the estate; after the father's death he was made
administrator ; he is married and has five daugh-
ters. Francesca became the wife of J. Lacosti,
and is the mother of one son. Antonia married
J. Murphy and has two daughters. J. Dolores

: died at birth. The mother of these children
passed away in 1845 and is buried in front of the
altar of St. Joseph's Church, an honor accorded
her in remembrance of her devoted work in be-
half of the Indians. This is the only case known
of in California of a woman being accorded this
honor. Mr. Sunol was not a man who sought
wealth to the exclusion of the higher things. of
life, in fact his greatest happiness consisted in do-
ing for others, and none can testify to this char-
acteristic more truly than his children, to whom
he was a most devoted father. The name of this
worthy pioneer is perpetuated in the town of that
name, so named in his honor, and is located on his
rancho.

ROYAL PORTER PUTNAM.

The Putnam family trace their ancestry to Gen.
Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame, and the
first authentic record of the lineage traces to the
year 1199, the de Puttenhams, and the first immi-
grant to American shores was John Putnam in
1614, the founder of the Salem family from which
Israel Putnam is descended. As John Putnam
was the founder of the name on the eastern shores

of this continent, so the first to establish the fam-
ily name on the western coast was Royal Porter
Putnam. The pioneers of the west were not
exempt from hardships and vicissitudes; indeed
their lives were one continued round of priva-
tions nobly endured and sacrifices cheerfully
made. The spirit of optimism which they dis-
played has come clown as an inheritance to their
descendants, so that now no state in the Union
can present to the world nobler instances of
courage and patient endurance than docs this
commonwealth by the shores of the western sea.
Noteworthy among the pioneers of the state who
braved many misfortunes and rose above mam
obstacles may be mentioned the name of Royal
Porter Putnam, who though dead, yet lives in the
memory of those who were associated with him
in the struggles of early days.

Mr. Putnam was a native of the east, born
in the town of Covington, Pa., August 5. 1837.
the youngest son of Thomas Putnam, a well-
known merchant of that town. Educational ad-
vantages in his day were very meager indeed,
and thus it happened that young Putnam reached
the age of twenty years with little or no school
training. During all this time he had been a
valued assistant to his father in his mercantile
business. During the long hours which his posi-
tion necessitated he improved his spare moments
by cultivating his mind, and indeed throughout
his life he never ceased in his efforts to make
up for the loss of educational privileges in his
youth. In 1857, at the age of twenty years, Mr.
Putnam bade good-bye to home and friends in
the east and with the determination to start life
on his own behalf set out for New Orleans. There
he joined an emigrant train which was at that
time leaving for the Pacific coast. No record of
their journev as far as Fort Yuma is available
but at that place it is known that Mr. Putnam fell
ill with a raging fever which confined him in a
hospital for six months, during which time he was
entirely at the mercy of strangers. Sickness and
delay proved no bar to his enthusiasm however,
and as soon as he had gained sufficient strenqlh
he resumed his journev towards the setting sun.
Reaching Los Angeles, he accepted the first
honest employment that offered, and for a time

368

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

worked as a laborer in the employ of Colonel
Banning. While there he heard much about the
superior advantages offered in the northern part
of the state and in the light of future events his
decision to come north was a wise one. By way
of the old stage line which ran between Los
Angeles and San Francisco he made the journey,
arriving at the stage station then known as the
"Lone Cottonwood Tree" located eighteen miles
northwest of the present town of Porterville.
Here bright prospects awaited him, for without
delay he was offered a position with a stage com-
pany at $30 per month. During the time he re-
mained with the stage company he guarded his
earnings carefully, laying aside whatever was left
after his few wants were satisfied, and at the time
of the Kern River gold excitement in 1861 he
wisely invested his means in a small hotel. For-
tune continued to favor him. Later he purchased
forty acres of swamp land which he laid out in
town lots, and at the same time started a small
general store. From this unpretentious beginning
sprang the now prosperous city of Porterville, so
named in honor of its founder, Mr. Putnam, who
by his associates was familiarly know as Porter.
In 1890, when there was a movement to divide
Tulare county into two separate counties, a move
was made to call one of them Putnam for the
pioneer settler.

While upon a visit to the east in 1864 Mr. Put-
nam was married at Bainbridge, Chenango county,
N. Y., to Miss Mary Packard, and soon after-
ward he returned with his bride to his California
, home. With renewed energy Mr. Putnam again
bent his energies toward the improvement of his
interests, extending his holdings from time to
time until he had acquired about five thousand
acres. In 1866 he built a more commodious
store room, in response to the growing demands
of his business, his being the principal merchan-
dise and implement establishment in that part of
the country. By his upright business dealings
and never-varying kindness and geniality he won
a lasting friendship with all who came in contact
with him, and when death removed him from
their midst his loss was indeed a public calamity.
He passed awav October 21. 1889, survived by
his wife and two sons, W. P. and F. O. In re-

sponse to the last wish of their devoted father the
sons have continued his business, to which the>
were trained as soon as their school days were
over. Born in Porterville, they attended the vil-
lage schools during their earlier years and later
attended the Berkeley Gymnasium and the Uni-
versity of the Pacific. Before his death Mr. Put-
nam had contemplated the erection of a business
block for store and hall purposes, and as far as
has been possible his heirs have carried out his
wishes in this respect and a two-story structure,
75x100 feet in dimensions, was erected as a monu-
ment to the memory of M r. Putnam. This proved
not only an ornament to the town of which he
was the founder, but for many years was the
headquarters of the Putnam Brothers extensive
mercantile business.

The oldest son, W. P. Putnam, was married in
Porterville in March, 1890, to Miss Minnie Kin-
kade, and they have one child. The younger son
F. O., married Onie Wilson and they have one
child ; they make their home in Santa Clara
county. By right of birth both sons are eligible to
membership in the Native Sons of the Golden
West, and hold membership in Porterville Parlor
No. 73.

FRANK D. MITCHELL.

A varied business career has been that of
Frank D. Mitchell, at the present time a real
estate operator in San Francisco, where he has
made his home for more than twenty-five years.
He is a native of the state of New York, his
birth having occurred in Addison, Steuben
county, November 30, 1854. His father, Dr.
John Mitchell, was also a native of that state, hav-
ing been born in Lisle, Broome county, in 1824.
He became a prominent physician in Steuben
county, where he made his home until his death,
which occurred in 1882, the result of an injury
incurred in a runaway. His wife was formerly
Miss Alma B. Hubbard, who was born at Cam-
eron" Mills, Steuben county, N. Y. ; she died in
Addison.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

371

Frank D. Mitchell was the eldest son in the
family. He received his education through the
medium of the common schools and eventually
graduated from the high school in Addison. Up-
on putting aside his studies he became a drug-
gist, following this business for a few years, and
then in 1874 he came to California. He located
in Hayward, Alameda county, and there engaged
in the drug business for two years, after which
he went to San Bernardino county and devoted
his attention to general merchandising. In 1882
he returned to the bay section of the state and in
San Francisco formed a partnership with L. H.
Brown in the grain business, continuing this for
five years. Disposing of his interest in this con-
cern he accepted the position of chief clerk in the
office of the general cashier of Wells Fargo
& Co. Express in San Francisco, with whom he
remained for sixteen years. Severing his con-
nection with them Mr. Mitchell has since given
his time and attention to real estate enterprises
in San Francisco and vicinity, a business in
which he has been very successful.

In 1879 Mr. Mitchell was united in the holy
bonds of matrimony with Miss Mary I. Brown,
of Hayward, Cal., and daughter of George
Brown, one of the early settlers of this section
and an esteemed citizen, and born of this union
are four children, namely: Ralph B., Alma L.,
Frank L. and Maud F. In his political affilia-
tions Mr. Mitchell is an advocate of Republican
principles, but he has never aspired to official
recognition. His home is now located in Ber-
keley, and here he has surrounded his family
with the comforts and conveniences which are
the legitimate fruits of his early industry and
ability.

JOHN SANBORN.

In the pioneer days of the state of California,
John Sanborn came to the Pacific coast to brave
uncomplainingly the hardships, dangers and
privations incident to the founding and up-
22

building of a new commonwealth. That his
efforts for the welfare of his adopted state
were prolific of results is evidenced by the
place given him in the annals of the bay
country of California, where he was known
for years as one of the prominent fac-
tors in the development of natural resources.
He was born December 12, 1826, in Perrysburg,
Monroe county, N. Y., a son of Joseph and Ann
(Blaisdell) Sanborn, pioneer farmers of that
section, representatives of English ancestry long
established on American soil. He was reared on
the paternal farm and received a limited educa-
tion through an attendance of the primitive
schools of that early day, the greater part of the
knowledge which enabled him in maturity to
make his way successfully in the world coming
from a close observation and an instinctive well
trained understanding of human nature.

In young manhood he went into business as
a manufacturer of lime, and finally became the
owner of several boats on the Erie canal. These
different enterprises he sold out finally and, in
1 85 1, with twelve other young men, came to
California, his main object at that time being to
obtain settlement for a boat sold to a man who
had emigrated afterward to this state. After
securing the settlement he went to the mines of
Tuolumne county with his companions, all of
whom were educated men and some belonging to
different professions. Mr. Sanborn boarded at
the Bear Tent, at Red Mountain Bar, and there
became the owner of the ferry and conducted
this interest until 1868. The flood of 1868 de-
stroyed his property, after which he came to San
Francisco and there established himself in the
business world, becoming the owner of valuable
property. He was one of the organizers of the
Clay Street Savings and Loan Society, and re-
tained his stock for a number of years, finally
disposing of it and purchasing the Vallejo and
Gibbs warehouses (bonded). In 1880 he came
to Oakland, and purchasing propertv improved
it for a home, laying out the grounds according
to his own ideas and erecting a commodious
and comfortable residence. He lived retired here
in his beautiful home until his death, which oc-
curred September 28, 1888. His death was uni-

372

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

versally deplored, for he had made many friends
throughout his long residence in California, be-
ing ever ready to lend a helping hand to those
in need, never refusing a request for aid, and
yet always giving assistance in an unostentatious
manner. He was also liberal and helpful as a
citizen, and although a stanch advocate of Re-
publican principles, was first of all a loyal citi-
zen in the interests of his community, state or
nation. He was a member of the Methodist
Episcopal church in religion, and a generous con-
tributor to its charities.

Mr. Sanborn married Miss Elizabeth Brodi-
gan, by whom he had eight children, two, Anna
Beatrice and Henry Eugene, dying in childhood.
The others are named in order of birth as fol-
lows : John A., born in 1871 ; William B., born
in 1873, a Cornell graduate, and on the 'var-
sity crew ; Grace E. ; George Francis ; Laura E.,
and Clarence B. All were educated in the best
schools and colleges and are possessed of consid-
erable talent in various lines. Mrs. Sanborn was
born June 17, 1849, a daughter of Terrance and
Ann (Sherlock) Brodigan, the father being a
native of the north of Ireland and the descend-
ant of a prominent Irish family. He was well
educated in his native country, and came to Cali-
fornia in 1857. He purchased property and con-
ducted a hotel business for a number of years,
then went to Virginia City, which place he
named, and also named the famous Comstock
mines. He acquired large interests during his
lifetime and became a man of means, passing
away in the home of his daughter, as did also his
wife. Mrs. Sanborn was educated in Benicia
and also by private instruction, being a woman
of rare grace and ability, who numbers her
friends liberally throughout this section of Cali-
fornia, where she has lived practically all her life.

SAMUEL FLEMING GILCREST.

A prominent name among those of the early
California pioneers is that of Samuel Fleming
Gilcrest, whose life and works are now but a

memory, as he has long since passed to his re-
ward. He was born of Scotch ancestry in
Washington county, Pa., August 21, 1819, a
son of Robert and Jane (Fleming) Gilcrest; he
grew to maturity in Knox county, Ohio, to
which location his parents removed when he was
a boy. He was brought up as a miller's son, but
had higher ambitions and after studying law in
Washington College and graduating therefrom
he was admitted to the bar and began to practice.
He became prominent in his profession and
served as probate judge and also was elected a
member of the state legislature. In Mt. Vernon,
Ohio, December 25, 1843, ne was united in
marriage with Miss Mary Ann Blackman, who
was born in England, March 21, 1820, and was
brought to America when eleven years old. She
was a daughter of William and Susan Black-
man; her father was born August 7, 1796, and
became a resident of California, where his death
occurred in 1896, when almost one hundred
years old.

Mr. Gilcrest removed with his family to
Howard county, Iowa, in the spring of 1855,
and there homesteaded land and took his place
among the pioneers. At the time of the Pike's
Peak excitement he started for that place, intent
as were all others upon making his fortune in
the wonderful discoverv. The bubble that had
attracted him burst before his arrival there, but
he decided to continue the journey and come to
California. Upon his arrival in the fall of 1859
he located in San Francisco and remained there
until the discovery of the Comstock mines at
Virginia City and Gold Hill, where he went at
once to the new fields and became a heavy in-
vestor, besides acting as manager of Comstock'?
interests for some time and also practicing law.
He lost heavily in his mining ventures ; while he
was in the east the bottom fell out of the busi-
ness and left him with practicallv nothing, though
he was preparing to bring his familv to Califor-
nia in 1863. They outfitted for the journey with
two teams, necessary provisions, etc., and began
the trip alone, but hearing of numerous Indian
massacres that had occurred to solitarv travelers,
thev made forced marches and caught up with
a Mormon train and thus completed their jour-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

373

ney, arriving in Oakland, November 3, 1864,
four months after they had left the Missouri
river. Mr. Gilcrest established his home at the
corner of Fifth and Harrison streets, and began
the practice of his profession in San Francisco,
continuing thus occupied for about one year, after
which he located in Oakland and continued his
practice up to two years prior to his death, which
occurred January 1, 1887. He held many posi-
tions of trust and responsibility in the home of
his adoption, was attorney for the Union Savings
Bank, and succeeded in building up a large
clientele, making a specialty as searcher of
records. Fraternally he was a Mason, hav-
ing been made a member of the organization
in Mt. Vernon; his wife, who died Feb-
ruary 12, 1893, was a member of the Bap-
tist Church and to this denomination he gave
a liberal support. They were the parents of the
following children : Frank Marion, born in Mt.
Vernon, October 14, 1844; Inez Augusta, who
was born August 22, 1847, and who became the
wife of Hugh Craig, of Oakland ; William Mur-
ray, v/ho was born June 7, 1849; John, born
August 21, 1851 ; and Fred, born November 9,
1853, and died July 26, 1854. Mr. Gilcrest
was a man of strong character, stanch integrity,
and personal attributes, which won for him a
wide circle of friends, who hold him to-day in
remembrance because of these things.

Frank Marion Gilcrest, the eldest son, in-
herited the sturdy qualities of character which
distinguished the elder man. His school days
over he began as a boy to make his own way and
worked at various occupations until 1875, when he
became associated with the New Zealand In-
surance Company, and remained with them for
some time. For the past seventeen years he has
been the representative of the Royal Insurance
Company, as special agent and adjuster. He is a
prominent citizen of Oakland, being associated
with various public movements ; fraternally he
is an Odd Fellow, having become a member of
the organization in Oakland over forty years
ago. June 10, 1873, he was united in marriage
with Mary Catherine Sailor, a native of Logan
county, Ohio. They became the parents of three
children, namely: William, born May 25, 1875,

and died December 1 of the same year; Charles
F., born September 8, 1880, an electrician and
now assistant instructor in the electrical depart-
ment of the University of California, of which
he is a graduate ; and Herbert F, in the employ
of the San Francisco Gas & Electric Company.

JOHN T. BRADLEY.

But a few years have elapsed since the death
of John T. Bradley, one of the pioneers of Cali-
fornia, and one whose best efforts were ever
given toward the betterment of the country in
which he spent the best years of his life. Mr
Bradley came of an old southern family, his
birth having occurred in Bourbon county, Ky., in
which state his father, Hiram Bradley, a native
of Virginia, engaged as a farmer for many years
after the war of 1812, in which struggle he
participated. Later he removed to Illinois for
a few years, but eventually returned to Ken-
tucky, where he spent the last years of his life.
His wife, formerly Mary Markwell, died while
they resided in Illinois.

John T. Bradley was born July 18, 1835, :-n
Bourbon county, and soon afterward his parent-
removed to Bath county, Ky., where he grew
to young manhood. He attended both the common
and subscription schools of Kentucky in pursuit
of an education. In 1850 he crossed the plains
to California, working his way by driving a
■vagon in a train, and upon his arrival, like
many others, went at once to the mines. This
was the beginning of a long and successful career
as a miner and dealer in mining stocks, although
until he had acquired experience he had his ob-
stacles to overcome in much the same manner that
other fortune seekers had. After having acquired
some means he began to deal in mining proper-
ties on his own responsibility, becoming half
owner of the Dromedarv. which employed a force
of three hundred and fifty men. After this en-
terprise closed down he went to Virginia Citv
and was there identified with many big deals,

374

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

owning one of the first mines which was sold to
the famous Comstock company, in which he also
became interested. In the succeeding years Air.
Bradley traveled extensively throughout the state,
investigating mines and mining properties, and
came to be recognized as an authority on such
subjects. Four years he spent in New York City
as a speculator in mining stocks and there met
with the same success which had characterized
his career in California. One year of his life
he spent as a resident of San Francisco, and
for the thirty-five years prior to his death he
had made Oakland his home.

Mr. Bradley returned east by way of the
Isthmus of Panama a few years after coming to
California the first time, and in Bath county,
Ky., near Wyoming, in 1855, he was united in
marriage with Miss Eliza J. Boyd. She was born
in Fleming county, Ky., a daughter of Samuel
Boyd, who was a native of Bourbon county and
the descendant of an old Virginia family of
Scotch and German extraction. He engaged as
a builder in Bath and Fleming counties until
his death. Her mother was in maidenhood
Lucy Van Nattan, who was born in Ken-
tucky, a daughter of Jarick and Anna (Estill)
Van Nattan, natives respectively of New
Jersey and Kentucky, the latter living to
the age of one hundred and five years. Mrs.
Boyd passed away in Bath county, Ky., leaving
six children, of whom two now survive. Mr.
Bradley and his wife returned to California in
1856 by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and he
at once resumed his mining operations, which he
continued up to within four years of his death.
They became the parents of four children, one
passing away in childhood, the others now sur-
viving: Mary F., Lucy and Hiram T., all at
home. Mr. Bradley's death occurred July 18,
1902. He was ever a capable and reliable citi-
zen in every respect, always ready to lend his
aid toward the furtherance of any plan for the
betterment of the community. He organized the
People's Water Company, but because of illness
was unable to put the matter through to com-
pletion. He was far-sighted and thorough in
his work, and in his investments in Oakland dem-
onstrated not onlv his faith in the future of the

city, but his judgment as well. Politically he was
a stanch advocate of Republican principles, and
was always loyal to the Union, even though of
southern birth and lineage. Fraternally he was
prominent in Masonic circles, having been made
a member of the organization in Grass Valley and
there raised to the degree of Knight Templar.
His widow occupies an enviable position among
the pioneer residents of the city, being held in
the deepest respect for her personal qualities, as
well as for the business ability with which she
has managed her affairs since her husband's
death.

JOHN JOSEPH GILL.

A prominent citizen of San Leandro is John J.
Gill, who as president oif the city board of
trustees exercises an influence in municipal
affairs which has resulted in material benefit for
the general public. Mr. Gill is a native of New
York, his birth having occurred in Elmira,
Chemung county, August 7, 1864. His father,
who was a native of Ireland, came to America
in young manhood and in Elmira, N. Y., mar-
ried Mary Bottersby, a daughter of John and
Catherine (Bolf) Bottersby. They remained
residents of the Empire state until 1866, when
they immigrated to California and in San Fran-
cisco spent the first two years. Coming to San
Leandro in 1868, Mr. Gill purchased a tract of
three and three-quarter acres of land, built a
residence and outbuildings, installed a wind pump,
and later engaged extensively in the raising of
fruit. He set out the orchard now cared for by
his son, J. J., which consists of about two hun-
dred and ninety trees principally cherry. Mr.
Gill always took a strong interest in local affairs,
in politics voting the Democratic ticket on nation-
al issues, but in his home town giving his support
to the men and measures best calculated to ad-
vance the general welfare. He died November 7,
1901, at the age of seventy-one years, survived
by his wife, who is now sixty-five years old.
They became the parents of the following chil-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

:!77

dren : Catherine ; Thomas, who died at the age
of forty-one years ; John Joseph, of this review ;
Margaret; William and Anna, twins.

John Joseph Gill was reared in California, re-
ceiving his education in the public schools of
San Leandro and through a private instructor,
and then took a commercial course in a business
college in Oakland. He began teaching school
in Capay valley, Yolo county, and continued in
this profession in various portions of Alameda
county until 1903. Since that year he has given
his attention principally to the raising of fruit,
caring for his mother's property and an eight-
acre tract of his own located on Dutton avenue,
where he has an orchard of apricot, cherry,
peach, pear and apple trees. This is sufficiently
damp from its own moisture and does not re-
quire irrigation. He has become prominent in
the public life of San Leandro and in April, 1904,
was elected to the city council and has served as
president since April, 1906. He has proven an
upbuilding force in public affairs, and is ac-
counted one Of the most practical and helpful citi-
zens of the community. In religion he is a
member of the Catholic Church of San Leandro,
and is a generous contributor to all worthy pro-
jects advanced for the general good of the
community.

CAPT. CHARLES NELSON.

A review of the representative citizens of
San Francisco and vicinity and of the men who
have played an important part in the history of
this part of the state would be deficient without
a sketch of the life and work of Capt. Charles
Nelson. While his name is well known in finan-
cial circles, as president of the Western National
Bank of San Francisco, he is perhaps even better
known among lumber and shipping interests as
president of the Charles Nelson Company, the
business being capitalized at $500,000, and classed
rs one of the most stable enterprises of the
1- ind on the Pacific coast.

As is true of many of California's best busi-

ness men, Mr. Nelson is of foreign birth, the
family from which he descended having for many
generations lived and died in Denmark. He him-
self was a native of that country, having lx;en
born September 15, 1830, and was a lad of only
thirteen years when he separated from family
and friends and came to the United States to
take advantage of the many opportunities which
at that time were holding out such glowing in-
ducements to young men of spirit and deter-
mination. Nature endowed him with a keen,
retentive, penetrating mind, which was exhibited
not alone in his early school days, but in after
life in whatever he undertook he had a faculty
of grasping the situation at a glance and the
no less important ability to execute in detail
what his judgment had pointed out. At the age
of thirteen years he left home and went to sea
and for his valuable services on the vessel he
received seventy-five cents per month. From
this humble position he rose gradually step by
step until he became mate, and it was found
there was nothing to which he could not turn
his hand, even taking the place of cook when the
necessity arose. On one of his voyages he went
to New York in 1847. Having promised his
mother he would return in four or five years,
he sailed from New York in 1849 to his
old home in Denmark. This was the last time
he ever saw his parents, his father dying in 1850
and his mother in 1863. In 1850 he shipped
for California, arriving in the harbor of San
Francisco in July of that year. The news of
the finding of gold had been the cause of his
coming to the state and it was thus natural that
he should try his luck in the mines. After fol-
lowing it with only fair success he finally gave
it up for a life with which he was more familiar
and for which he had a natural adaptation. In
the early days he secured an interest in a whal-
ing boat at Sacramento and with the assistance
of a comrade rowed the boat from Sacramento
to Marvsville, a distance of ninety miles, carry-
ing freight and passengers. He made frequent
trips down the river buying vegetables and gar-
den produce, which was sold in the city. He
purchased these supplies from a Mr. Parber and
his three sons, who had settled on Steamboat

378

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Slough in 1846. He also took up a government
claim of two hundred and fifty acres down the
river, paying $2.50 per acre for it. In addition
to his shipping operations the captain also en-
gaged men in the winter to chop wood, which
was sold to the steamers engaged in the river
trade. After hard work and economy he ac-
cumulated a little money, which he placed on
deposit in Adams & Co. Bank, intending to use
it to defray the expense of the repairs on a
vessel which at that time he was rebuilding.
Before he could use any of the money, how-
ever, the bank of Adams & Co., together with
other banks of San Francisco, failed and he
never received one cent of his hard-earned
money. The captain says he owes everything
of a successful nature to his good, sensible wife,
to whom he was married in 1856. In 1862, in
connection with John Kantfield, the captain be-
came interested in a barkentine, the first one
built on the Pacific coast, and still later became
interested in a larger vessel in San Francisco.

Mr. Nelson's identification with the lumber
business dates from the year 1867, at which time
he bought an interest in the Kimphill Lumber
Company, who owned large sections of timber
land in Humboldt county, Cal. After Mr. Nel-
son became interested in the business the com-
pany extended the scope of the business, by ex-
tending the facilities for the manufacture of
lumber, also purchasing a line of tow boats, and
from their various mills they shipped large
quantities of lumber to all points along the coast
as far south as San Pedro and extending north
to Portland and Seattle. As his means accumu-
lated Mr. Nelson made investments in other
vessels, building up a large shipping business on
the coast, which finally became organized and
known as the Charles Nelson Company. In
connection with their sailing vessels the company
has four steamers, among which is a new one
of steel, now on her maiden voyage, built by
Moran Brothers, of Seattle. The present officers
of the company are Charles Nelson president,
James Tyson vice-president and treasurer, and
P. Thompson secretary. The offices of the com-
pany are located at No. 112 Market street, San
Francisco, in one of the city's new office build-

ings, and both from an accessible point of lo-
cation and as a result of the excellent business
reputation of the company they are receiving
a large share of the business in their line in
San Francisco and surrounding country. Mr.
Nelson is interested in twenty or more sailing
vessels in carrying and distributing lumber at
their different points, which includes China,
South America, Australia and intermediate
points.

Six children were born of Mr. Nelson's mar-
riage with Metha Clausen, a native of Denmark,
which occurred on October 13, 1856, but of the
number all died in infancy with the exception
of one daughter, Margaret, who is now the wife
of Eugene Bresse. Having had no boys of his
own the captain brought over seven nephews
from Denmark, most of whom are married and
have homes of their own in Alameda county.
The wife and mother passed away in 1896, leav-
ing a blank in the affections of her husband and
daughter, as well as in the hearts of the many
friends to whom she was endeared through as-
sociation of many years with the Old People's
Home. By nature she was kind hearted and
public spirited and it was a desire to benefit
the old people among her countrymen from Den-
mark that induced her to establish the Old
People's Home in San Francisco. At first the
home was restricted to those of Danish origin,
but it finally opened its door to old people of
all nationalities. The institution still exists as
a monument to its originator, and is now in
charge of her daughter, Mrs. Bresse, who was
appointed president of the home upon the death
of her mother.

The second marriage of Captain Nelson oc-
curred in 1901 and united him with Miss Helen
Stind, also a native of Denmark. They have
a commodious residence on Seminary avenue,
which is surrounded by twelve acres of land,
and taken all in all forms one of the finest
country residences of the vicinity, for no means
have been spared in its improvement and beau-
tification. Here the captain spends his leisure
time, for though he is now in his seventy-ninth
year, he goes daily to his office in San Fran-
cisco. Politically he is a pronounced Repub-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

lican, and fraternally he is identified with the
Masons. He was also president of the Chamber
of Commerce of San Francisco for four years.
Throughout his life he has been an inveterate
reader, and as his reading has been confined
to the best literature he is well informed, and
is an easy and pleasant speaker. For a number
of years he has been a trustee of Mills College,
a girl's school, which is located in close prox-
imity to his home. During the many years that
Captain Nelson has been located in the Bay
cities he has won a host of friends on account
of his unswerving devotion to duty and honesty
of purpose, and all who know him admire him
for his pleasing personality.

SOCRATES HUFF.

The late Socrates Huff holds a place in the
annals of Alameda county unsurpassed by that
of any other citizen, won not by great wealth, but
by the inherent qualities of noble manhood which
distinguished his career. His death, which oc-
curred in San Leandro September 26, 1907, re-
moved from the community which had known
him, a successful financier and a man of affairs,
and above all a man of noble mental and moral
stature, unswerving integrity and honesty of pur-
pose, whose life was ever a power for good and
an influence toward better, higher and purer
things. His is a career which will never pass
from the memory of those who have known him,
for its influence will live for all time in the lives
of the many who have felt the power of his
strong, earnest and upright manhood.

A son of William and Plesa (Garver) Huff,
Socrates Huff was born in Crawford county,
Ohio, July 1, 1827, and when he was two years
old the family home was transferred to St. Jo-
seph, Mich. The wife and mother did not long
survive the journey, for the following year, 1830,
she passed away, ere her son was capable of real-
izing his loss. He grew to manhood in St. Jo-
seph, and in addition to his school training, re-

379

ceived the equally necessary training for a busi-
ness career, which well fitted him for the battle
of life which was before him. It was about New
Years day of 1849, that letters were received in
his home town telling of the discovery of gold
in California. As he was then a young man full
of ambition and ready for any venture which
promised larger opportunities than his home sur-
roundings had to offer, it is a matter of no sur-
prise that Socrates Huff was among those who
■soon set out for the Golden West ; indeed, he
himself formed a party for that purpose. The lit-
tle party was composed of Socrates and L. B.
Huff, L. C. Wittenmyer, A. M. Church, James
M. Morton and A. P. Pinney. Having secured
their equipment, purchasing their mules in In-
diana, wagons in Chicago and provisions in St.
Louis, they set out in February, 1849, to make
their way to the "land of promise." Mr. Huff
arrived at Bear River August 12, 1849, stopping
there long enough to try his hand at mining, but
at the end of two weeks he abandoned it and
made his way to Sacramento. For a short time
he held a position in that city, but ill-health made
a change of location necessary, and from there he
went to Mission San Jose, remaining there until
March, 1851. It was about this time that he re-
turned for a visit in the east, and after remain-
ing a few months, again took up life in the west.
In August of that year he purchased a vessel
which he put on the line between Alvarado and
Stockton, and until November. 1852, carried on a
remunerative business.

Returning to the east a second time. Mr. Huff
was there united in marriage. February 14. 1853.
to Miss Amelia Cassady, a native of Pennsyl-
vania, and in May of the same year the young
people started for California. Mr. Huff driving
a large band of cattle and horses. Green Valley.
Contra Costa county, was their destination, and
there they made their home until 1857. in which
year they transferred their abode to Havward.
Alameda county. Eighteen months afterward Mr.
Huff again went east, but as on previous visits
he again came to make his home in the we«=t. this
time settling in San Leandro, which was ever
afterward his home and the scene of his mn^t tell-
ing achievements. Mr. Huff was always alert to

380

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

respond to the duties of citizenship, and in select-
ing him to public office his fellow-citizens knew in
advance that their interests and those of the gen-
eral public were entrusted to one who held a pub-
lic trust as a sacred office. In 1863 he was elected
treasurer of Alameda county, a position which he
filled with credit for four years, during which
time he was also interested in a mercantile busi-
ness in Carson City, Nev. In 1880 he was chosen
as a delegate-at-large from this state to the na-
tional convention held at Chicago, at which the
martyred President Garfield was nominated. In
1886 he was recalled to the county treasurership,
succeeding himself in the elections which fol-
lowed in 1888 and 1890, and could have had a
nomination in 1892 if he had so desired, as Mr.
Huff was recognized throughout the state as the
synonym of honesty and fidelity to any great
public trust. At an early day he became identi-
fied with the banking interests of Oakland and
was one of the organizers and directors of the
Union Savings and Union National Banks of
that city. He continued to be actively identified
with banking in Alameda county up to the
time of his death, having in the meantime or-
ganized the Bank of San Leandro, of which he
became president. The institution was a success
from the start, and under his careful and able
management made wonderful progress and is to-
day counted as one of the most stable financial
institutions in Alameda county.

The death of Socrates Huff occurred at his
home in San Leandro September 26, 1907, the
death of his wife having occurred about three
years previously. They became the parents of
seven daughters, of whom six are now living, as
follows : Mrs. J. F. Sloane, Jennie Huff, Mrs.
O. P. Downing, Callie Huff, Mamie Huff and
Mrs. Bush Finnell. Mr. Huff was a member of
but one organization, the Society of California
Pioneers, of which he was at the time of his death
one of the vice-presidents. In closing this brief
review of the life of one of Alameda county's
noble citizens it is only fitting to recall the tri-
butes paid to his memory by those who knew
him best. He was a man of the highest type of
character, and of sterling integrity in all the walks
of life. In business his word was held equal to

his bond, and in public as well as in private life
he was held in the highest esteem for uprightness
and irreproachability of character. The Rev. E.
E. Baker delivered an eloquent eulogy over the
remains of Mr. Huff, from which we quote as
follows : "A good name is to be desired rather
than great riches. One of the priceless legacies
given unto this family is this name for honesty
and incorruptibility, unsullied, and without tar-
nish or stain or blemish."

JUDGE ALEXANDER M. ROSBOROUGH.

The death of Judge Alexander M. Rosborough
occurred on the 6th of November, 1900, remov-
ing from the community of Oakland a citizen
who had been prominent in public affairs for a
half century, giving the best years of his manhood
to the upbuilding and development of the state
at the time most needed in the history of the
commonwealth. Judge Rosborough was the de-
scendant of southern ancestry, and was born in
Chester district, South Carolina, May 30, 1815;
his parents removing to middle Tennessee in
1826, he received his preliminary education
through the medium of the public schools in his
home community. Although but a lad in years
he volunteered for service in the campaign to sup-
press the Creeks in Georgia and Alabama, and
after the signing of the treaty a regiment volun-
teered to go to Florida to fight the Seminoles, the
last of these veterans being the judge. Return-
ing home he entered the Tennessee university and
graduated therefrom in 1839, after which he en-
gaged for a time in teaching. Taking up the study
of law with Judge Cahal he combined the prac-
tice of his profession with journalism, about this
time becoming editor of the Columbia Observer
and Nashville Whig, which matters occupied his
attention during the ensuing eight vears.

Coming to California in 1850, Judge Rosbor-
ough was one of the first to wield the pen on the
San Francisco Evening Picayune, holding the
position of editor for some time. Later he formed

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

a company to settle at Cape St. George, the pres-
ent site of Crescent City, which place he named.
He removed to Yreka, Siskiyou county, in 1853,
and there practiced law with J. Berry and Elijah
Steele until he was elected county judge, in which
capacity he served for fourteen years, when he
resigned to become judge of the district court.
He held this position for ten years, when his
judicial career was ended by the statute of limi-
tation under the new constitution. During all
those years Judge Rosborough enjoyed the poli-
tical support alike of the Republicans and Demo-
crats, and never once was a decision of his re-
versed by the supreme court. At the close of the
Modoc war in 1873 he was appointed by Presi-
dent Grant, at the request of the Indians, as one
of the peace commissioners. In 1879 ne became
a permanent resident of Oakland, where he ac-
quired the prominence that had been his as a resi-
dent of Northern California. During the politi-
cal campaign in Alameda county in 1890 the citi-
zens of Siskiyou county, in a petition liberally
signed by Republicans and Democrats alike, rec-
ommended Judge Rosborough to the voters of
this county as a non-partisan candidate for the
office of superior judge, but he declined to enter
the campaign. He continued the practice of his
profession for many years in Oakland, became a
member of the board of education, and in every
possible way sought to advance the interests of
the city. Up to the time of his death, although
then advanced in years, Judge Rosborough's fac-
ulties were as clear and his judgment as good as
in his earlier days.

The judge left a widow, a daughter, Mrs.
Fanny J. Gardiner, and two sons, Alexander J.,
ex-county tax collector, and Joseph J. Ros-
borough.

FREDERICK McLEAN CAMPBELL.

For six generations the ancestors of Frederick
McLean Campbell, late a citizen of Oakland,
were residents of Connecticut, where members of
the family became prominent in commercial, pro-

fessional and political life. His parents removed
to New York City and there he was born in
1837, the seventh in a family of eight sons; the
mother, who was a Miss Bidwell before marriage
and a descendant also of a family for six genera-
tions resident of Connecticut, died when this son
was but four years old, while the father attained
the ripe age of eighty years. The father in-
herited Scotch characteristics which were distin-
guishing marks of his personal appearance.

The early education of Frederick McLean
Campbell was obtained in the public schools of his
native city, and at the age of fifteen years was
placed in charge of a class, during which incum-
bency he attended the normal school. He grad-
uated at eighteen and two years later married
Miss Catherine A. Marston, also a teacher, and
who throughout her life proved a helpmate to her
husband in his chosen work. The two came to-
gether to California in 1858, and on the 3d of
September Mr. Campbell took charge of the
Vallejo school, continuing in that position until
recommended by Rev. J. H. Brayton to a posi-
tion in the College School of Oakland, and the
duties of which he assumed in 186 1. He had
all the characteristics of a successful teacher, his
very carriage and gait expressing firmness and
decision of character ; an eagle eye which took
cognizance of all going on around him, and com-
bined with these attributes a geniality of disposi-
tion, a kindness and courtesy, which won him
friends among both children and patrons. He
quickly rose to prominence as a leading instruc-
tor of the state of California, and in 1870 was
chosen superintendent of public schools of Oak-
land. He threw his whole life into the success
of his work, gathering about him the best assist-
ants, upon whom he impressed the importance of
advancing the interests of the schools of the sec-
tion. During the thirteen years of his incumbency
he accomplished for the schools of Oakland what
would ordinarily have taken many years to bring
about. His merit being generally recognized, in
1879 he was elected state superintendent of public
instruction, and with the revolutionizing of the
school system by the new constitution he found
his duties onerous in the extreme. Ho was most
active in the revision of the school laws and in

384

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

their execution, and maintained his position until
1883, when he retired from the office. Califor-
nia's system of public instruction, as fixed by cus-
tom and code, is largely the work of John Sweet,
living, and Fred M. Campbell, deceased, the
former instrumental in laying the foundations
broad and strong, and the latter in adjusting and
adapting the parts ; the one steady, constructive,
tenacious, attentive to details and combative on
occasion, the other affable, brilliant, inspiring, re-
sourceful, conciliatory as a rule, and tireless in
the pursuit of an object to be attained.

Returning to Oakland, Mr. Campbell made
this city his home until his death, interesting him-
self not only in all educational movements, but
as well in the general upbuilding of the city. He
served as city councilman for a time and took an
active interest in the municipal welfare of the
city. He was president of the State Teachers'
Association, was a member of the board of re-
gents of the state university, formerly the
Brayton school, in which he was a popular teach-
er for many years ; was ex-officio of the normal
school ; and, indeed, was the first to be called upon
to support all educational movements. He intro-
duced the semi-annual promotion in the Oakland
schools, and was instrumental in bringing the
National Educational Association convention to
Oakland in 1888. Mr. Campbell was a member
of the Masonic organization, having joined in
Vallejo, and became a charter member of Oak-
land Lodge, No. 188, F. & A. M. His death,
which occurred in Washington, D. G, March 28,
T905, was universally deplored, for he had won
a wide friendship throughout the entire state and
enjoyed a position second to none in the esteem
of his fellow townsmen.

Mrs. Campbell passed away January 27, 1893,
being almost fifty-six years old. She was born
in New York City April 4, 1837, and educated
for a teacher, and while thus engaged met her
future husband. After marriage she accom-
panied her husband to California, and for many
vears remained his most devoted assistant in all
his educational work. For three years she acted
as deputy state superintendent of public instruc-
tion, and twelve years as deputy superintendent
of the Oakland schools, while she taught for

many years in the local schools. She figured in
public only for the sake of her husband, being a
devoted wife and mother, and unusually fond of
the peace and quietude of her own home.
They became the parents of seven children, of
whom Gertrude became the wife of John Dassel,
of Niles, Cal., and has seven children ; Andrew
M. is employed in the Los Angeles Coffin Com-
pany, of Los Angeles ; he is married and has two
children ; Emma died in Sacramento at the age of
twenty years ; Mary M. is principal of the Fred
M. Campbell school of Oakland; Grace is the
wife of William M. Gassaway, of Oakland;
Marston, a civil engineer, resides in Honolulu,
and is superintendent of public works for the
Hawaiian islands ; he has one child, Marston, Jr. ;
and Catherine is the wife of H. P. Roach, of
Oakland, and the mother of one son.

GEORGE WILLIAM FRICK.

The Frick family was established in California
by George Washington Frick, a native of West-
moreland county. Pa., a son of Abraham Frick,
a sturdy descendant of German settlers, as was
also his wife, his death occurring in 1880 and
hers in 1888. They were the parents of six
sons and two daughters. George Washington
Frick removed to Illinois about 1839, accom-
panying his parents, who settled on a farm near
Moline. He received his education in the dis-
trict schools of the period, which he supple-
mented by private study, working his way
through a course in the Mount Morris Seminary
when about twenty years old. He was married
in Galena, 111., in 1852, and before the close of
the year the young couple set out for California
accompanied by her parents. They crossed the
plains without serious mishap and in 1853 ar~
rived in the state, where Mr. Frick taught the
first public school in Santa Cruz for one or two
terms, then moved to Centerville, Alameda
county, where he was similarly engaged. He
was one of the first Republicans in the state and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

385

almost from the first he was active in party af-
fairs. In 1857 he moved to Sonoma county and
three miles northeast of Petaluma he purchased
a ranch of one hundred and twenty acres, and
at the same time taught the Bethel school for
one term. In i860 he was nominated for sheriff,
made an active canvass at the expense of time,
money and energy, but withdrew before election
in favor of a Union Democrat, to promote the
chances of the Union party, then formed of
Douglas Democrats and Republicans. He was
active in the Union League movement during the
Civil war, and president of the Bethel Union
League. He was chairman of the Sonoma county
delegation in the state convention that nominated
George C. Gorham for governor. He was twice
elected supervisor, though the county had a Dem-
ocratic majority, and his most bitter oppon-
ents never impugned his official integrity. He
was recognized as a man of high principles, and
though loyally attached to the party of advanced
ideas, was a lover of freedom and had no use for
party "bosses." He was school trustee for fifteen
years, and an official of the Methodist Episcopal
Church nearly all his life. In 1871 he disposed
of his interests near Petaluma, and the following-
year found him located in Mendocino county. He
was next identified with the Lompoc Temperance
Colony, in Santa Barbara county, where he lo-
cated in 1874, being one of the pioneers of the
movement. He kept the first general store in
Lompoc, and while serving as school trustee was
largely instrumental in erecting a $5,000 school
house within a year of the time of settlement,
while he was also an efficient promoter of the
erection of a good church building for the Metho-
dist Episcopal Giurch. Selling his store in
Lompoc he purchased a dairy ranch of one thou-
sand acres in the San Miguelito canyon about
1876, and three years later located permanently
on the place. For the benefit of his children he
later rented the property and moved to Oak-
land, where they could have the best educational
advantages. Mr. Frick died in Lompoc while
on a visit, July 12, 1889, at the age of sixty-
two years. His wife, who died May 3, 1884, was
in maidenhood Mary E. Bryant ; her father, Will-
iam Cowper Bryant, was a native of New Eng-

land, who immigrated to Illinois at an early date
in the history of the middle west and engaged as
a merchant in Galena. He made several trips
to California, first by way of Mexico and later
by the Isthmus. While crossing the plains he
was shot by Indians and for some time he car-
ried the arrowhead in his breast. Finally he had
to have it cut out with a butcher knife, as he
could not reach a doctor. He was also a pioneer
drayman of San Francisco, and while there fell
through a wharf and received injuries that
crippled him for life. His wife, Anna (Sterret)
Bryant, was of German extraction and was prom-
inent in church and charitable work throughout
the state, where she became generally known as
"Mother Bryant." She came across the plains
on crutches and lived to be about seventy years
old. Two of her sons, both ministers, John and
William, are still surviving. Mrs. Frick was
president of the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union of Lompoc at the time of her death.
Mr. and Mrs. Frick were the parents of the fol-
lowing children: George W., of this review;
Laura A. L., who died December 3. 1888. of
typhoid fever, at the age of twenty-seven ; Abra-
ham Lincoln, who was born February 21. iSnn,
and in manhood became a lawyer, holding the
position of deputy district attorney of Alameda
county in 1891 and later that of superior judge:
John Frederick, who was born October 23. i860,
and was graduated from the Oakland high school
in 1888, and has also studied law ; and Blanche,
who was born October 9. 1874, also a graduate
of the Oakland high school.

George W. Frick, one of the most prominent
educators of Alameda county, was born in Santa
Cruz. Gal., April 4. 1854. and received his early
education in the Bethel district school in Sono-
ma county, and at the age of fourteen years en-
tered Prof. E. S. Lippett's scientific and classical
institute at Petaluma. In 1870 he took one term
in a grammar school under the instruction of
J. W. Anderson, later state superintendent of
public instruction: and in 1871 he entered the
Napa Collegiate Institute. At nineteen he
learned the printer's trade in a newspaper office
in Napa : was then with the same employer in
San Jose, where he first began to write for the

386

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

paper. He then returned to Petaluma, from
which place he went to Lompoc with the family,
where he taught a private school and worked
on the local paper. He next studied law in San
Francisco for about nine months. Returning to
Petaluma he worked as compositor and writer,
studying also to qualify as a teacher and after-
ward received his teacher's certificate in Santa
Rosa in 1877. Thence he taught in Sebastopol,
same county, and from that place returned to
Lompoc, where his parents had located in 1874.
Coming to Alameda county in 1879 he taught
in Castro valley for eighteen months ; then a
two-department school at Mount Eden for three
and a half years. In 1884 he took charge of the
Haywards school of seven departments, and next
of the San Leandro school of eight departments
in 1886. In July, 1 888, he was elected by the
Oakland board of education as principal of the
Tompkins school of eleven departments. In the
fall of 1890 he was nominated and elected county
superintendent of schools of Alameda county,
which position he filled with credit to himself
and to the satisfaction of the public. Mr. Frick
thereafter acted as principal of the Cole school
of Oakland for twelve years, being again elected
county superintendent of schools for Alameda
county in 1906, which position he now holds.

In Oakland, January r, 1885, Mr. Frick was
united in marriage with Miss Rhoda Louise Tuc-
ker, who taught at Haywards under his princi-
palship. She was a daughter of William J. and
Sarah L. (Walker) Tucker; her home was ori-
ginally in Brandon, Vt., whence she came to
California and received her education in the
state schools, graduating as class poet in the
class with ex-Governor Pardee. Mr. and Mrs.
Frick became the parents of two children, Gladys
C, a student in the Oakland high school ; and
Raymond L., in the public school. Mrs. Frick
died in 1892. Mr. Frick has taken time to as-
sociate himself with various fraternal organiza-
tions, being an active member of the Odd Fellows
since attaining his majority, and has held all the
offices in the subordinate lodge and encampment
of that order. In 1890 he joined Oakland Can-
ton No. 11, of the order. He is a past grand
of Sycamore Lodge No. 129, and past chief

patriarch of Alameda Encampment No. 29, both
of Haywards, and was district deputy grand mas-
ter for two terms. He is also a past master of
Eucalyptus Lodge No. 243, F. & A. M., of Hay-
wards ; a member of Oakland Chapter, No. 36, R.
A. M.; the order of the Eastern Star, a charter
member and past exalted ruler of Oakland Lodge,
No. 171, B. P. O. E., and past president of Oak-
land Parlor, No. 50, N. S, G. W.

Since Mr. Frick has been superintendent of
schools, he has made many improvements in the
work of the office. Its entire clerical and business
methods have been thoroughly revised and sys-
tematized. He has visited every graded school in
his county from five to six times every year, al-
though the law requires but one visit, as he is of
the opinion that it is the most important function
of his office to keep in touch with the children
and teachers by personal visitation.

JAMES LINFOOT.

When James Linfoot came to California it was
for the purpose of finding his fortune among the
treasures of the earth proclaimed to the world at
the time of the discovery of gold in this state,
and like many others he found his most profitable
employment along other lines. He was born in
England, in York, on the 15th of March, 1832,
and there spent the years of his young manhood
and received his education and youthful train-
ing. Deciding to come to California, he crossed
the Atlantic to New York City, thence to St.
Joseph, Mo., and from that point came across the
plains to the Pacific coast with one companion,
Schuyler Davis, who is also now deceased. At
once Mr. Linfoot went to the mines in Placer
county, but spent only a month in this occupa-
tion, when he found more profitable employment.
In 1855 he came to the vicinity of San Leandro
and went to work in the harvest field. A little
later he was sought out by a wife of a fellow
countryman, who had recently died, she asking
him to take charge of the San Leandro hotel

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

which had been conducted by her husband. Mr.
Linfoot accepted the work, conducted it success-
fully for a time, and then bought the widow's
interest. In the meantime he had purchased the
present site of the San Leandro postoffice, and
afterward he sold both this and the hotel prop-
erty, when he purchased twenty-four acres of
land and began its improvement and cultivation.
He put up a residence and all outbuildings nec-
essary, and set out seventeen hundred fruit trees,
principally apricots. This remained his home
from 1858 until his death and is now one of the
profitable fruit ranches of this vicinity. In the
neantime he also engaged extensively in the rais-
ng of sheep and cattle, having invested in other
property which he devoted to this purpose. Sub-
sequently he disposed of his stock interests and
>f later vears gave his entire time and attention
o his fruit ranch.

In San Leandro, in 1857, Mr. Linfoot was
inited in marriage with Mrs. Elizabeth Mason,

native of Pennsylvania ; she had married Sam-
tel Mason and become a pioneer resident of Cali-
ornia, and the one son born to them, Benjamin
•Yanklin, is a practicing physician in San Lean-
Iro. Mrs. Linfoot died in 1897, at the age of
ifty-five years. Politically Mr. Linfoot was a
tanch adherent of the principles advocated in
he platform of the Democratic party, a candi-
!ate for various offices on this ticket, and was
lected town treasurer.

JOHN BROWNE HARMON.

One of the most prominent among the early
ioneers of California was the late John Browne
larmon, who not only held a high place among
ie legal fraternity of the state, but was as well
ne of the strong factors in the development and
pbuilding of native resources. Mr. Harmon was

native of the middle west, born in Warren,
>hio, October 29, 1822 ; for more complete de-
lils concerning the family refer to the biography
f Edward D. Harmon, a brother, which appears
n another page of this volume.

The primary education of Mr. Harmon was re-
ceived through the medium of the public schools,
after which he entered Yale and pursued his
studies there for some years. After graduation
he returned to the middle west and in Kentucky
engaged in teaching school for two years. De-
siring to see more of the world he went to New
Orleans and there read law, being admitted to
practice some time later. There also he mar-
ried in 1847, Mrs- ^Iar.v De Neale (Wolfe)
Morgan, by whom he had five children, of whom
three grew to maturity. Dana, deceased, a
graduate of Yale, engaged for years in mining in
California; Mary Wolfe became the wife of
L. J. Le Conte, and is now the only survivor ; and
Dr. R. Harmon, who graduated from the Uni-
versity of California and was a prominent phy-
sician of Oakland, died in 1904. By a former
marriage Mrs. Harmon had one son, T. W. Mor-
gan, city engineer of Oakland for many years.
Mr. Harmon was a member of the examining
board for West Point for a time, and from that
position he came to California in 1853. He re-
mained one year in Sacramento engaged in the
practice of law in partnership with M. Latham,
and there he purchased a home and began its
beautification in preparation for the coming of his
family, whom he returned for in 1854. The trip
both east and west was made via the Isthmus of
Panama, and considerable trouble was experi-
enced in crossing the Isthmus, as they had to
stand guard to avoid trouble with the natives.
However, the journev was made in safety and
they made their home in Sacramento until 1856.
In that vear Mr. Harmon came to San Franc isco
and here engaged in the practice of his profes-
sion, and on account of his wife's health ho es-
tablished their home in Oakland in 1858. their
first home being at the corner of Twelfth and
Adeline streets. The following year Mr. Har-
mon returned to Sacramento as reporter for the
supreme court and there practiced law until i8fy.
returning again to San Francisco and thence \r>
Virginia City, New. where he practiced law for
two vears. Again returning to San Francisco he
once more established a law practice and this he
continued up to the time of his death. In 1870
he located in Oakland at the corner of Seven-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

390

teenth and Jackson streets, in 1884 went to Fruit-
vale for two years, and in 1886 came to Berkeley
and built a residence on Dwight Way. His death
occurred in February, 1899, having practically
retired about two years previously.

Mr. Harmon always took a profound interest in
religious matters, having assisted in the or-
ganization of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in
Oakland in 1870, while he had also been con-
nected with Grace Church in Sacramento as early
as 1855. For many years he served as vestry-
man. In politics he was a stanch adherent of
Republican principles, and fraternally was as-
sociated with both the Masons and Odd Fellows.
He was especially active in the latter organiza-
tion, having been made a member in Sacramento
and there passed all the chairs, represented the
grand lodge of the state, and also became grand
master of the state lodge in 1869. For ten years
he served as delegate to the Grand Lodge of the
United States, regardless of the time it took from
his profession. He was made the deputy grand
sire of the United States Grand Lodge and was
sent to Australia to harmonize affairs between
Australia and New Zealand during their time
of contention, and met with great success in his
efforts. While there he was offered a posi-
tion of barrister in Australia. He was a broad
man in every sense of the word, gifted to a de-
gree that placed him high among men of his
profession, and also possessed such personal
characteristics as could not fail to win the ap-
preciation and esteem of all with whom he came in
contact.

FRANCIS KITTRIDGE SHATTUCK.

Among those who participated in the early set-
tlement of Oakland and Berkeley the gentleman
whose name heads this article and who retained a
continuous residence here, was a very prominent
factor. In public and private enterprises, in civil
and political life, he was a leading, moving spirit
from the days when Oakland commenced her life
as a village until his death, when she began to

give promise of a future for which her founders
could scarcely have dared to hope. He is re-
garded as the father of Berkeley, having been in-
strumental in bringing the steam railroad and
building the street car line and erecting the prom-
inent business blocks here.

He was a native of New York state, born on
the banks of Lake Champlain, at Crown Point,
Essex county, March 6, 1825, his parents be-
ing Weston and Elizabeth (Mather) Shattuck.
Both parents were natives of Massachusetts, and
of old New England families, and the father was
a farmer by occupation. F. K. Shattuck of this
review was reared to farm life in his native place,
and his education meantime had received such
attention that at the age of eighteen years he was
competent to teach a common school. This voca-
tion he followed for four years during the win-
ter months, and spent his summers during that
period in attendance at a seminary. Having thus
rounded out a very good education by his own
endeavors, he gave up teaching and, going to
Vermont, entered the mercantile business as a
clerk in a store at Pittsford, at which place and at
Bridgeport he was thus engaged for two years.
The discovery of gold in California, and the
consequent excitement throughout the world
caused his mind to turn in this direction, and he
decided to take the chances of making his for-
tune in this far-away land. In company with
three other young men, all of whom are now de-
ceased, he went to New York City, and there
took passage on the steamer Cherokee, which
left the harbor January 14, 1849, f°r Chagres.
Arriving there they proceeded by boat to Gor-
gona, and thence to Panama on foot ; from that
point thev became passengers on the steamer Or-
egon, and, continuing their journey without un-
usual incident, landed at San Francisco Febru-
ary 22, 1850. They started without delay for
the mines, going by boat to Marysville, and from
there afoot to Rose's Bar.

Their first mining experiences were not very
successful, and after a month or two they pro-
ceeded to Nye's Crossing, on the Middle Yuba,
where, after looking over the ground, they com-
menced the work of turning the river from its
channel. This they accomplished, but were not

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

i so successful in their search for gold, no metal of
consequence being taken out. The party broke
up after this failure, some of its members going
to Nevada City, where Messrs. Shattuck, Blake,
Kleinfelter and William Hillegas operated as
partners. While the other members of the com-
pany were engaged in seeking a shaft Mr. Shat-
tuck hauled the gravel from the hills down to
Deer creek for washing. They were fairly suc-
cessful in their work there, which continued from
August until the setting in of the rainy season,
which commenced that year in December. They
then went to Goodyear's Bar, on the North Yuba,
and there and at Downieville they mined until
January, 1852. Then they left the mines and pro-
ceeded down to the region surrounding the bay of
San Francisco. Messrs. Shattuck, Hillegas,
Blake and Leonard took up six hundred and forty
acres of land, a portion of which is now included
in the university grounds. Messrs. Shattuck and
Hillegas farmed in partnership, and also estab-
lished themselves jointly in the livery business in

. Oakland. They also embarked in stock-raising,
and in i860 opened up the Mount Diablo coal
mines. They built the Shattuck & Hillegas hall,
which was the recognized place of public gath-
erings, and many stirring meetings were held
within its walls, notably those having something
to do with the entrance of the overland railroad
into this city. In 1869 this hall was converted
into a theater, which retained the name of the

• proprietors, and which was opened as a place of
entertainment January 25, 1869. In all these
varied business enterprises these gentlemen re-
mained associated until 1876, in which year Mr.
Shattuck closed out his mining, livery and stock
interests. He was ever afterward connected with
the movement of real estate in this vicinity as an
investor, and for a portion of the time as a build-
er. In fact his principal business interests may
be said to have been in real estate, of which he
had large holdings in Oakland and Berkeley. In
the latter place he had one hundred and twenty
acres platted in town lots.

With most of the measures which were from
time to time adopted for the improvement of
these cities he was more or less closely identified.
Among the first railroad enterprises with which

he was connected was the Oakland Railroad Com-
pany, which on December 27, 1864, petitioned the
city council for the privilege of building and
maintaining a railroad from a point at or near
Broadway wharf to a point in Oakland township,
at or near the lands belonging to the College of
California, through Broadway and Telegraph
road. This company obtained its franchise from
the legislature, May 3, 1866, the original incor-
porators named being F. K. Shattuck, F. Delger,
C. B. Wadsworth, Israel W. Knox, A. Hersey,
S. E. Alden, I. H. Brayton, F. E. Weston. F. B.
Ferris, S. H. Willey, George Goss and George
H. Fogg. March 15, 1866, the Amador Water
Companv was incorporated by F. K. Shattuck, J.
West Martin, J. S. Emery, and J. W. Dwindle,
with a capital of $ 1,000,000, its object being to
supply Oakland and the town of Alameda with
fresh water from springs, wells, the laguna in
the valley of Amador, and the laguna from Las
Positas in Livermore valley, and from all other
available sources. February 13, 1871, the Home
Gas Light Company, incorporated by F. K. Shat-
tuck, Charles Webb Howard, Sextus Shearer, C.
T. N. Palmer, A. C. Henry and J. West Martin,
obtained from the city council of Oakland a fran-
chise for the purpose of establishing a gas man-
ufacturing plant, laying mains throughout the
city streets.

In 1870 Mr. Shattuck petitioned the council
for the privilege of building a wharf on the Oak-
land water front, and on the 2d of May of the
same year he, with Hiram Tubbs, J. W. Martin,
W. A. Bray, W. Van Voorhies, T. LeRoy, A. J.
Snyder, George M. Blake, Harry Linden and Al-
len J. Gladding, was granted the right of way to
lay down and operate for twenty-five years a
railroad from Fruitvale to and upon Twelfth-
street bridge, Oakland, and one on Adeline street
to University avenue. These were all bona fide
enterprises, originated with the idea of improve-
ment and profit, and, while they can not all he
classed as successful, all had their bearing on the
general advancement of the city's prosperity. In
1866 Mr. Shattuck erected one of the finest brick
buildings in the city at that time, a substantial
business structure on the corner of Broadway and
Eighth streets.

392

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

He was president of the Mutual Endowment
Association from the time of its organization,
and was one of the organizers of the Oakland
Home Insurance Company, of which he was a
director, fie was also a director of the First
National Bank of Oakland, as well as one of the
originators and the prime mover in the Oakland
and Berkeley Rapid Transit Company, whose
purpose was the building of electric roads, and
was president of the company, which rapidly
pushed its work. He organized the Commercial
Bank of Berkeley, which is now known as the
First National, and also the Berkeley Bank of
Savings, and was president of each until his
death, which occurred September 9, 1898.

In public affairs Mr. Shattuck always took
an active and prominent part. He was town and
city clerk under the first organized government
for Oakland, and was clerk of her first board of
trustees, being elected May 17, 1852, and serv-
ing until his resignation in January, 1853. March
3, 1856, he was elected a member of the city
council, and served during the years 1856-57.
March 3, 1858, he was again elected to the coun-
cil and chosen president of that body on the 8th
of the same month. March 7, 1859, he was
elected mayor of Oakland, and served one year.
Upon the election of the new corporative officers
March 7, 1859, ^ was resolved by the outgoing
council "that the thanks of this body be ex-
tended to F. K. Shattuck for the able and im-
partial manner in which he discharged his duties,
and that our congratulations be offered him upon
his unsought elevation to the Mayoralty of this
city."

March 5, 1862, he was again elected to the city
council, and by virtue of successive re-elections,
held a seat in that body until 1867. He was
chosen president of the council, March 14, 1864.
During much of the time of his connection
with the city council he was also a member
of the county board of supervisors. He was
first chosen by the people to that position
September 2, 1857, and re-elected September
i, 1858. September 7, 1859, ne was elected
to the legislature of California, and served in
the ensuing session. November 6, i860, he
was again elected to membership in the board of

supervisors, and served continuously until 1869.
November 3, 1862, he was chosen chairman of the
board, and held that position during the remain-
der of his connection with that body. He was
also chosen as one of the managers of the county
hospital in 1864. During his incumbency of the
chairmanship he was again elected to member-
ship in the board, September 3, 1873, and re-
mained in that position until 1876. During his
incumbency of the Chairmanship of the board of
supervisors, the county seat was removed to Oak-
land, and the present court-house was built, and
in both these matters, as well as in the selection
of the site, Mr. Shattuck took an active and prom-
inent part. He was one of the committee of
prominent citizens which guaranteed a site for
the county buildings. February 3, 1868, he was
appointed by the board a member of a commit-
tee of three to draft a bill to be submitted to the
legislature, authorizing the board of supervisors
of the county to issue bonds for the purpose of
erecting buildings for the state as an inducement
for the removal of the state capital to Alameda
county.

Mr. Shattuck was a prominent and influential
member of the Republican party, and served on
the state central committee of the party, and was
a delegate to the national convention of 1872.
During the war his sympathies were strongly
with the Union cause, and his voice and most
earnest endeavors were given to the support of
the national government. At the county conven-
tion of the Union party, held at San Leandro,
June 14, 1862, he was chosen a delegate to the
state convention, and October 29, 1864, acted in
the capacity of marshal of the northern Alameda
county division of the great Union parade held
at Oakland on that day, which was one of the
greatest political outpourings in the history of
this community. Mr. Shattuck passed the chairs
in Live Oak Lodge No. 61, F. & A. M. ; was a
member of Oakland Chapter, R. A. M., and a
charter member of Oakland Commandery, No. II,
K. T., organized January 18, 1876. He held the
presidency of the Masonic Temple Association
from the time of its incorporation, June 25, 1878,
and took an active part in the erection of the
building belonging to the association.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

:jfj.j

Mr. Shattuck was married in New York state,
December 30, 1855, to Miss Rosa M. Morse, a
native of that state. Mr. Shattuck was a man of
strong individuality, yet entirely unobtrusive in
manner. He was intimately associated with the
history of Oakland, and took a deep interest and
commendable pride in her progress. Occupying
as he did a position in the foremost rank of her
most solid and substantial citizens, he could re-
flect that his success in life had been due entire-
ly to his own exertions, and in no small degree
to his steadfastness in adhering to purpose. He
had but a meagre start in life when he came to
the present site of this city, and though he pro-
duced splendid financial results the citizens of
Oakland universally conceded to him the merit
of having well deserved his popularity. He
passed away September 9, 1898, at his home in
Berkeley, which he established in 1868.

EDWARD DANA HARMON.

The families which were represented in Cali-
fornia by Edward Dana Harmon, one of the
early pioneers of the state and until his death in
1903 a prominent upbuilder, were among those
first established on American soil during the
colonial period of our history. Massachusetts
was the home of the Harmons, Reuben Harmon,
of Sunderland, Mass., being one of the prominent
men of that section ; he removed to Rupert, Ben-
nington county, Vt, and there on the 19th of
October, 1780, the birth John Brown Harmon
occurred. When he was nineteen years old his
parents removed to Trumbull county, Ohio, then
known as the Western Reserve, where the older
man became the owner of five hundred acres of
land upon which were located salt springs, which
induced him to attempt the manufacture of salt.
His death occurred in the vicinity of Warren in
1810, at the age of fifty-six years. In 1800 John
B. Harmon returned to Vermont and in Rupert
studied medicine under Dr. Jonathan Blackmer,
23

remaining in that location until 1804, when he re-
turned to Warren, Ohio, near which he owned
a farm of two hundred acres, and there spent his
last days, passing away in 1858. By marriage he
allied his fortunes with those of another old and
prominent family of New England, his wife being
in maidenhood Sarah Dana ; she was born in
Connecticut a daughter of Daniel Dana, a de-
scendant of French Huguenot stock and for man)
years a probate judge. He died in 1841, at the
age of seventy-nine years. Mrs. Harmon sur-
vived her husband many years, her death occur-
ring November 6, 1868, when a little more than
seventy-two • years old. Of the four sons and
one daughter in her family all are now deceased,
although all lived to a good age, longevity being
a trait of the family.

Edward Dana Harmon was born in Warren,
Ohio, May 9, 1831, and in the public schools of
Warren, as well as a private institution, he re-
ceived his education. He grew to young man-
hood on the paternal farm, after which he secured
employment as a clerk. His health failing him he
decided to come to California for the trip and
accordingly, March 14. T853, he left his home
for New York City, and there, on the 22d of
the month, took passage for the Isthmus of Pana-
ma. Arriving in San Francisco, April 15. he
at once manifested the inherited thrift of his
New England ancestry by seeking an avenue for
investment. With a cousin he purchased a tract
of one hundred and twenty acres of land near
Lake Merritt, now the site of Piedmont, and there
the two engaged in farming until 1857. Having
sufficiently recovered his health by this time. Mr.
Harmon endeavored to enlarge his operations by
purchasing the squatter's title to one hundred and
seventy-two acres on the west shore of the lake,
to which he also obtained the Spanish title. This
property he sold in i860, and in partnership with
H. A. Opdyke purchased one hundred and
thirty-five and a half acres the following year, be-
coming the sole owner of this tract in 18A4.
Finally, with his cousin, he sold twenty-eight
acres in 1866, and two years later thirty-six
acres, and in 1876 began the subdivision of the
remaining property. He then engaged in build-

396

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

ing residences, from 1872 to July, 1891, erect-
ing forty-four houses, most of which were con-
tracted for before built. He continued in this
business until his death and not only acquired a
competence, but was largely responsible for the
general upbuilding of this section of South Berke-
ley. He was a farsighted business man and
through his efforts, both of time and means, the
Southern Pacific Railroad Company was induced
to put their line through to Berkeley, which
movement greatly increased the value of real
estate. He was pre-eminently a helpful citi-
zen, serving for nineteen years as a member of
the school board and clerk of the same ; he was
a Republican politically, although never desirous
personally of official recognition. He was liberal
to a fault, giving generously to all charitable in-
stitutions and indeed to all whom he knew to be
in need; was unostentatious in manner, and no
one ever knew the extent of his help to others.
He was a home-loving man and took great pride
in his family, and their loss was irreparable when
death removed him from their midst in Septem-
ber, 1903.

Mr. Harmon was twice married, his first wife
being Marie Metcalfe, who was born in Newark,
Ohio, September 21, 1840, a daughter of Elial
and Temperance (Colman) Metcalfe, of French
Huguenot and English extraction ; the father was
born in Massachusetts and reared in New York,
where his wife was born in 1814; after their
marriage they removed in 1838 to Ohio, where
his death occurred in 1878, at the age of seventy
years, and hers in 1891. Mrs. Harmon died in
Lorin, Cal., June 5, 1882, leaving three children :
Lewis Colman, who was born in 1869, and now
resides at No. 824 Thirty-eighth street; Oak-
land; Charles Reuben, who was born in 1873,
and now resides on Prince street, Berkeley; and
Julian Metcalfe, who was born in 1880.

December 13, 1883. Mr. Harmon was united
in marriage with Helen Metcalfe, a sister of his
first wife; she was born September 19, 1848, and
came to California permanently after the death of
her sister, having made a visit here previously.
She now makes her home at No. 1627 Woolsey
street, Berkeley.

J. ROSS BROWNE and SPENCER COCH-
RANE BROWNE.

In the pioneer days of the state of California
the Browne family was established on the Pacific
coast by J. Ross Browne, who was born in Ire-
land, February 11, 1821. His father, Thomas
Egerton Browne, was a man of culture and a
writer of keen wit and as editor of the Comet
he incurred the royal displeasure and for seven
years was imprisoned in the Newgate jail. Every-
thing he possessed was confiscated and after his
release he was banished from the country, and
emigrating to the United States he located in
Kentucky and in Louisville established a finish-
ing school for young ladies. He rose rapidly
to a position among his fellow-citizens and was
finally called to Washington by the publisher of
the Congressional Globe to report the proceed-
ings of congress. His son, J. Ross Browne,
was associated with him at this time, having set
out in the world at the age of thirteen years to
earn his own livelihood. When nineteen years
old he was fully competent to take an important
position as a shorthand reporter and from that
time on he rambled throughout the world, acquir-
ing a wide fund of information that later proved
of inestimable value to him. He toured the east
on a whaler, telling of his experiences in "Etch-
ings of a Whaling Cruise," his first publication.
During President Polk's administration he be-
came private secretary to Robert J. Walker,
secretary of the treasury, and later entered the
revenue service and sailed for California, the
scene of his future labors. Here he reported the
first convention ever held in the state, at Mon-
terey. Following his sojourn here he went to
Europe for a tour, taking with him his family
(having in the meantime married), and upon his
return to America had printed "Yusef," the re-
sult of his impressions from a visit to Constan-
tinople and the Holy Land. In 1855 he was ap-
pointed special agent for the treasury depart-
ment for California by Robert J. Walker, for a
term of four years, and after its expiration he
again visited Europe with his family, writing
upon his sojourn abroad and after his return
home several works, among them "The Ameri-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

397

can Family in Germany," "The Land of Thor"
and "Crusoe's Island." In 1864 he returned to
California and remained for a time, and was
then appointed commissioner of mines and min-
ing and for two years was engaged in the com-
pilation of statistics, the "Mineral Resources of
the Pacific States and Territories" and "Re-
sources of the Pacific Slope." During this time
he was also engaged in literary work, having
published "Adventures in the Apache Country."
In 1868 he was sent as minister to China and
one year thus spent ended his public career.
Returning to California he built a residence and
improved a place which he named Pagoda Hill,
now in Claremont district in Oakland, and here
he passed away in 1875. He was married in
1843 to Miss Lucy A. Mitchell, daughter of Dr.
Spencer Cochrane Mitchell, a practicing phy-
sician of Washington at that time and formerly
a surgeon in the- British navy, and born of this
union were ten children, five now living, Ross E.
and Thomas M., mining engineers, the only sur-
viving sons. Mr. Browne was a member of the
Society of California Pioneers, was interested
in all matters of contemporary interest, and as
an enthusiast of the future of California sought
always to promote the general development and
upbuilding of the state. He was a man of unus-
ual attainments, his writings were clear and force-
ful, his personality winning, and by the strength
of these and his loyal, helpful citizenship he was
mourned by a large circle of friends through-
out the different parts of the world in which he
was known.

Spencer C. Browne was born November 9,
1845, m Washington, D. C, and was but a child
in years when he accompanied his father to
California on the latter's second trip west in
1854. In the early days he attended school in
Oakland, their home being at that time on Fifth
between Madison and Jackson streets, his father
owning the land from Fifth street to the water
front. When nineteen years old he went to Ari-
zona with a surveying party under Colonel Da-
vidson, their duty being the survey for the first
telegraph line in that territory. They experi-
enced considerable trouble from the Indians
who strongly resented their invasion, but with-

out serious mishap they returned to California,
when Mr. Browne secured a position with
Brooks & Rouleau, which firm was among the
first searcher of records in San Francisco. Still
later he became receiving teller in the San Fran-
cisco Savings Union, when James De Frenicr\.
Sr., was president of that institution. In 1867
he became identified with the Bank of California,
when D. O. Mills was president and W. C.
Ralston cashier. The following year he resigned
his position in order to accompany his father to
China, and after a year spent in Shanghai and
Pekin returned to California and in Oakland em-
barked in the real estate business in partnership
with Franklin Warner and Mr. Gardner. The-
partnership continued for some time, then .Mr.
Browne withdrew and engaged in the business
alone. He became a man of influence in Oak-
land and vicinity, admired both for the busi-
ness ability which distinguished his career and
the stanch integrity and uprightness of his
methods in dealing with others. He was public-
spirited, was interested in higher education, and
as a citizen was always found ready to lend his
aid toward the furtherance of any movement
suggested for the increase of the general pros-
perity. As a Democrat he voted that ticket on
national issues, but locally was too broad-
minded to be hampered by party lines, believing
in giving his support to the man considered best
qualified to discharge the duties of official posi-
tion. In Oakland Mr. Browne was united in
marriage with Miss Lucy Croghan. and born
of this union were five children, three surviv-
ing : Mrs. Sidney M. Van Wyck, Jr. ; Florence
E. ; and Spencer C, Jr. Mr. Browne passed
away at his residence in Oakland November 2^.
1896, aged fifty-one years.

EDWIN WESLEY MA SUN.

In the mother country William Mas!in, an
Englishman, married Jane Britain, an Irish cirl.
of Dublin, and migrated to the Colonies, settling
on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1690. From

398

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

this couple descended the subject of this sketch.
His ancestors . had no coat of arms or quartering,
but were plain farmers, of sturdy stock, "proud of
their harvest lore." The Maslins are still farm-
ers in Kent county, 'Md.

Edwin W. Maslin was born April I, 1834, a
son of Philip Thomas and Harriet (Points) Mas-
lin. His early education was received in the pub-
lic schools of Baltimore, the highest being in
the high school. On November 7, 1852, he sailed
in company with John L. Bromley, now. of Oak-
land, on the ship Hermann from Baltimore.
Landing in San Francisco in May, 1853, he at
once went to Grass Valley, in Nevada county.
Arriving at that place on Saturday night, on Mon-
day following he began mining at wages and con-
tinued to mine until September, 1855, when he
began the study of law. He was admitted to the
bar by Judge Niles Searles, of loving memory,
in 1857. In 1859 he was elected district attorney
of Nevada county, a,nd; served two years. He re-
moved to Sacramento : in 1869 and was secretary
of the judiciary committee of the senate for the
sessions 1869-70 and 1871-72. He was elected
secretary of the state, board of equalization in
1870 and discharged the duties until by change
of administration he was removed, and he then
went to Santa . Rosa,, Sonoma county, and there
resided until the fall of 1875, when Governor
William Irwin selected him as his private secre-
tary. This position he held until 1880, when he
was again elected (although he was a Democrat),
by a Republican board, as secretary of the State
Board of Equalization, which position he held
until the spring of 1891, when he assumed the
management of the State Board of Trade and dis-
charged the duties of his position until March 1,
1894, when he was appointed by Col. John P.
Irish, naval officer of customs at San Francisco,
as his deputy, which office he now holds.

Mr. Maslin moved to the city of Alameda about
thirteen years ago and at once took a deep and
abiding interest in the Free Library. On De-
cember 20, -1907, he was elected one of the trus-
tees of the library, which responsible office he still
holds and hopes to hold until the end of his life.
In this trust he has been associated with men of
culture and of ljke -enthusiasm as his, and with

them he enjoys the encomium of Herbert Put-
nam, the librarian of the Congressional Library
at Washington, D. C, that the Alameda Free
Library is the model small library of the United
States.

Outside of his vocations Mr. Maslin acquired
some other distinctions. He located the famous
Idaho mine in Grass Valley and afterwards the
Maryland, which is an extension of the Idaho.
The instinct of the farmer blood in him prompted
him to engage in horticulture. In 1884 he planted
a vineyard of the sherry wine variety, in Placer
county, and took a prominent and earnest part in
the various commissions and societies organized
to promote the horticulture interests of the state.
In this line he was one of the original farmers,
and still is one of the directors of the State Board
of Trade, a body that has done so much for the
promotion of the agricultural and horticultural
industries of the state. In 1884 ne conceived the
idea of growing the Smyrna fig and planted about
twenty acres of seedling Smyrna figs at his vine-
yard in Placer county. These figs needed the
aid of an insect to fertilize the female flower of
the fig. He induced the Hon. James A. Wilson,
secretary of agriculture, to import the insects
from Smyrna, which were placed in Fresno
county, where they flourished and are now the
means of sustaining the fig production of the
state. Orchard, vineyard and mines have long
since passed out of his possession, owing, as he
said, to a want of business training.

Mr. Maslin has been twice married, the first
union occurring December 26, 1859 ; his wife
was Mary Underwood, a daughter of Jackson
Underwood, whose wife was a Miss Fox before
her marriage. Born of this union were eight
children, of whom three died in infancy ; the
others being Vertner, Prentiss, Woodley, Maud
and Paul — Woodley and Maud were drowned;
the remainder survive. Mrs. Maslin died at San-
ta Rosa, May 29, 1874, and on October 5, 1885,
he was united in marriage with Miss Mary Alice
Way, daughter of Eli B. and Margaret (Reyn-
olds) Way, her native state being Illinois. She
is a grandniece of Governor Reynolds of Illinois.
They have one child, Francis Irwin, now a stu-
dent at the University of California.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

401

Once Mr. Maslin was asked by a distinguished
and wealthy citizen of this state, why, with his
opportunities, he had not acquired wealth. He
replied : "Because my father did not teach me
the value of money. I have not courted the lime-
light, but there is this compensation : had I gained
wealth I might not have been as I have been,
'of some service to the state.' "

HENRY WETHERBEE.

In the pioneer days of the state Henry Wether-
bee came to the Pacific coast and joined hands
with those whose personal efforts throughout the
years were not alone given to the accumulation
of wealth, but to the upbuilding and develop-
ment of a statehood, and so potent were his ef-
forts, so prolific of results, that to-day, although
long since passed to his reward in the great
Beyond, he still holds a place in the affection of
the people — the old generation cherishing his
memory from personal acquaintance, and those
of the younger because of the fruition of plans
which have made their city of San Francisco and
the surrounding country a part of what it is in
importance throughout California. Mr. Wether-
bee came by inheritance to those qualities which
endeared him to his fellowmen, being a descend-
ant of some of the best families of New Eng-
land, his early ancestors on American soil having
taken part in colonial wars before his paternal
grandfather fought at the battle of Bunker Hill
for the freedom of his country. His father was
Jeremiah Wetherbee and his mother Mary
Holden, she being a daughter of Col. Moses
and Sarah (Perry) Holden, of Barre, Mass.,
the eighth generation in direct descent from
Elder Brewster of Mayflower fame, and the
seventh from Thomas Prince, governor of Ply-
mouth colony from 1634 to 1636 and 1657 to
1673.

Henry Wetherbee was born in Cambridge.
Mass., February 19, 1827, and in the public
schools of that city received his preliminary edu-

cation. He early presented himself for admission
to the Boston Latin school, but was rejected be-
cause one year under age. Shortly afterward
he put aside his studies for a business career, his
father being a prosperous business man of Boe
ton. This also he put aside to come to Cali-
fornia, the gold fever proving irresistible, and
although his father offered him a salary of $7,000
a year (then a fabulous sum) to remain and
work for him, he continued his preparations to
leave for the Pacific coast via the Isthmus of
Panama the latter part of the year 1849. All
of his friends imagined this to be a country abso-
lutely devoid of civilization and as a result pre-
sented him with various weapons of defence, one
of these being a revolver, which is now in the
possession of Mrs. Wetherbee.

Upon his arrival Mr. Wetherbee went at once
to the mines on the Northern Sacramento, but
after remaining a day, returned to San Francisco
to look about for better opportunities than min-
ing appeared to present to him. Just about this
time a ship came into port loaded with a cargo
of potatoes which the captain wished to sell in
bulk. These Mr. Wetherbee bought without a
dollar to pay down, with the privilege of allow-
ing them to remain where they were until dis-
posed of. He hired a man to sell them from a
wheelbarrow and on this venture cleared $6,000.
Within the ensuing five years he had made and
lost several fortunes, but always gaining an ex-
perience which proved of inestimable value in
later deals. One of his ventures was that in
which he joined a party of thirty men. each to
put in $500, with a view to selecting a town site
to rival San Francisco, where ships from foreign
and Atlantic ports could discharge their freight.
It was proposed to build a road into the valley
where the mines were yielding rich returns, but
the high prices of freight were forcing the miners
out. They chartered a schooner, the General
Morgan, under command of Capt. John P.rannan.
and set out upon their venture. They met with
various mishaps, one of which was being be-
calmed for two clays, during which time they
engaged in fishing. They met a party of Indians
who had never seen white men. and the captain,
having brass buttons on his coat, was caught by

402

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

them and held until every button was cut off,
and shortly afterward they adorned an Indian
chieftain. With the help of the Indians they
dragged the boat along the beach to Humboldt
bay, where they selected a site and laid out a
town, called Eureka by Dr. Poett. Later they
assisted in laying out the towns of Areata and
Trinidad. At the beginning of their enterprise
the Indians had manifested an unfriendly spirit
and told the white men to go and leave them in
possession of their lands, gathering three hun-
dred strong to enforce their demands. A party
of twenty-nine men went to meet them in a boat
and opened fire upon the war dancers, killing
twelve, this being the first Indian war on Hum-
boldt bay, and after this they returned to Eureka
and built a fort, and posted a guard night and
day.

One of the first wharves built in San Francisco
was by Sam Brannan, on Stuart and Market
streets, and this Mr. Wetherbee leased at $300
a month, in partnership with another forty-niner,
B. F. Pond, a son of Dr. James Otis Pond, who
was in early years surgeon at Newgate Prison
in Granby, Conn. Later he removed to New
York City and founded an academy of medicine,
and practiced until past eighty years of age. The
new company had considerable shipping interests
throughout the Pacific coast, bringing lumber
from Oregon, one cargo, arriving on the brig
Halcyon, bringing them handsome returns, as it
came in just after the disastrous fire at Sacra-
mento. When in command of the barque Julia
Ann, plying between Sydney and San Francisco,
Captain Pond was wrecked October 3, 1855, and
for two months the crew and fifty-six passengers
lived on a coral island, subsisting on fish and
cocoanuts. They were out of the line of ships
and were finally forced to put to sea in small
boats, and after four days succeeded in reaching
Bora Bora island, where through the kindness
of the British officials they secured a boat to re-
turn to the island for the passengers, who had
remained behind. Captain Pond returned to
New York and never again located in California.

In 1856, to secure himself for money loaned
Alexander MacPherson, Mr. Wetherbee took a
half interest in a lumber business, which part-

nership continued until Mr. MacPherson's death.
They acquired large tracts of timber land from
time to time, gaining possession of twenty-eight
thousand acres of redwood about Albion river,
thirteen thousand on the Noyo, and twenty thou-
sand on Eel river, five thousand on Russian
gulch, besides additional tracts on Ten Mile
river, the Elk, Donahue, Pudding creek and else-
where in Mendocino and Humboldt counties. A
few months before his death he disposed of these
interests, being then known as the King of the
Redwoods, and planned to spend his time in
travel and the enjoyment of his home. Death
ended his plans, however, and carried from the
midst of an admiring and loving populace a man
who had ever been faithful to the highest inter-
ests of those about him and to the sterling in-
tegrity of his own character. During the early
days of San Francisco Mr. Wetherbee had
served as a member of the vigilance committee
and carried throughout his life a scar on his
hand received during those troublous times. He
went east in 1857 and was under constant sur-
veillance of his friends because the banished
hordes of lawbreakers were scattered throughout
the country and were ever ready to take revenge
on those who had driven them out of San Fran-
cisco. He was a stanch Republican politically
and supported the principles of his party, al-
though personally he was too busy to care for
official recognition. He was interested in many
clubs and societies, among them the California
Pioneers, the Olympic Club, the Pacific Union
Club, and the Bohemian Club ; supported, liber-
ally all charitable enterprises, as' well as giving
liberally to individual needs ; was prominent in
the Woman's Exchange and acted as a member of
the advisory committee, receiving from this in-
stitution at the time of his death a most eloquent
tribute to his worth as a man, citizen and friend ;
and in the affairs of life he was the same genial,
courteous, kindly gentleman that first set out
in the early days to win a fortune — unspoiled by
success, simple, earnest and direct in all his
thoughts, effort and action. He was a man of
quick perception, had a fund of original wit and
had he so chosen would have been a humorist,
unrivaled. No citizen held a higher place in San

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

403

Francisco, where flags were placed at halfmast
at the time of his death. One who endured the
hardships and trials of the early civilization, its
dangers and disappointments, his name will not
readily be forgotten or his participation in public
affairs cease to be of moment to those who fol-
low after.

Mr. Wetherbee was married in New York to
Miss Nellie Merrell, a cousin of Captain Pond,
and three years later they returned together to
California, the widow now making her home in
Oakland, dispensing hospitality to all who come
in contact with her, and exercising a beneficial
and permanent influence on philanthropic and
social affairs of the city.

CHARLES D. BATES.

At his death May 5, 1906, Charles D. Bates
left a record not only of kind deeds toward his
fellowmen, but also one of faithful work in the
•enduring macadamized streets that form so pleas-
ant a feature of Oakland. The brickwork of the
great Lake Merritt sewer constructed by him up-
wards of thirty years ago also bears testimony to
this day of his fidelity in carrying out his con-
tract for that important enterprise. Mr. Bates
was born in the town of Oneida, Oneida county,
N. Y., June 26, 1833, tne sixth in order of birth
in a family of ten children, six sons and four
daughters. The family moved west to Illinois
in 1837, arriving at Chicago when that city was
but a mere village made of cloth tents and board
houses. The next year the family went about
seventy miles further west and took up a farm
near the little town of Marengo, McHenry
county.

In that early day schooling was one of the
most difficult things to secure, the boys working
■on their father's farm and walking four or five
miles to school ; the schoolhouse was of the prim-
itive style of those olden days, made of rough
logs and plastered with mud to keep out the
■cold winter winds. On his eighteenth birthday

Charles D. Bates was given his time by his fa-
ther, and he then started out to make his own
way in the world. Accompanied by an old friend
of his father's, a railroad contractor, he went to
work and remained for several years on the old
Galena & Chicago Railroad, the Illinois Central,
the Dixon airline, now the Chicago & Northwest-
ern. Later he engaged independently on the
Dubuque & Iowa Central Railroad and from
there to the Minnesota Central and subsequently
worked on the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

When the war of the Rebellion broke out he
left for California by way of Denver, Colo.,
which was then known as Cherry Creek, a min-
ing town composed of cloth tents and board shan-
ties. This was in July, 1861. He found nothing
to engage in there and pushed on to California,
and arrived at Sacramento September 23, 1861.
The following winter saw the great flood with
its disastrous results, to guard against a repeti-
tion of which the legislature appropriated funds
for a levee around the city. Mr. Bates with J.
M. Watson and Jared Irwin, ex-city clerk of Sac-
ramento, secured a portion of the work. In
June, 1862, the Central Pacific Railroad com-
menced to build its road and Mr. Bates' company
of contractors took that portion between Rock-
lin and Newcastle. After this stretch of road
was completed the Central Pacific organized the
famous contract and finance company and took
the building of the road into its own hands. Mr.
Bates then went to San Francisco and formed a
co-partnership with J. M. Watson and engaged
in street and road work. They built the Bay
View road and the race course at South San
Francisco. In March. 1864. Mr. Bates took the
contract for the construction of the Western Pa-
cific Railroad from San Jose to the first crossing
of Alameda creek, a distance of twenty miles, un-
der Cox, Meyers and Arnold. The same year he
built the Alameda Railroad from Alameda to
Hayward for the owner and manager, the late
A. A. Cohen. In September. 1865, he entered
into a contract with Charles Minturn to build the
wagon road from San Rafael to San Qucntin.
and also constructed for the same party the rail-
road from Petaluma to what is called Haystack
on Petaluma creek. In March. 1867. he formed

404

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

a co-partnership with Capt. George T. Bromley
and contracted with the Central Pacific Railroad
Company for the building of the Western Pacific
Railroad from the first crossing of Alameda creek
to Stockton, but owing to a difference of opinion
regarding' certain classifications of the work the
contract was not carried out. He came to Oak-
land in 1868 and entered into partnership with
the late T. P. Wales, in street work. In 1872
Mr. Bates, Hugh Sheer, T. P. Wales and F. E.
Weston organized the well-known Alameda Mac-
adamizing Company and continued in the street
business until 1879, when the company was com-
pelled to leave the field of their labors by the
prohibitive measure of the new constitution. The
members of the company then went to Portland,
Ore., and started in the macadamizing business
there under the name of the Portland Paving
Company. In 1882 Mr. Bates with others or-
ganized the Oregon Construction Company and
built about one hundred and seventy-five miles of
the Oregon Railway & Navigation Company's
road from Umatilla Landing on the Columbia
river to Huntington in eastern Oregon. Mr.
Bates then resumed the management of the Port-
land Paving Company, continuing therein until
1887, and then returned to Oakland and took up
street work under the old Alameda Macadamiz-
ing Company. The death of Mr. Sheer in 1893
resulted in the retirement from business of the
last-named company and Mr. Bates and others
formed the Piedmont Paving Company, which is
still in existence.

On the 22nd of November, 1865, Mr. Bates
was married to Miss Mary A. Tregloan, a daugh-
ter of John Tregloan, a pioneer of California in
18*49; ner brother, John R. Tregloan, of Amador
county, is superintendent of the South Spring
Hill Mining Company, while she has a sister,
wife of Dr. Gabbs, residing in Alameda. Five chil-
dren were born of this union, namely : Ada ;
Clara, the wife of W. F. Knight ; Mae, the wife
of Dr. George Martin ; Charles D., Jr. ; and
Ethel, the wife of Herbert M. Lee. Mr. Bates
lived in Oakland about thirty-eight years, with
the exception of the time spent in Oregon, and
always identified himself with all that made for
the betterment of this, his favorite home. His

parents were of old Puritan stock and from them
he inherited those sterling principles of integ-
rity which made him one of the most highly es-
teemed and respected citizens of Oakland. His
father served in the war of 1812, while earlier
ancestors were identified with the colonial history
of our country. Mr. Bates was made a Mason in-
Live Oak Lodge in 1872 and an Odd Fellow in
Portland in 1885. His hand was ever open to the
call of charity, and it may well be said of him
"None knew him but to love him, none named
him but to praise." Mr. Bates was a lifelong Re-
publican, but never aspired to political honors.

ELIJAH HOOK.

Elijah Hook left as a memorial of his life a
commercial enterprise which demonstrated his
possession of much business ability, as well as
a reputation among business associates and
friends of stanch and unswerving integrity and
personal characteristics which are as rare as
they are precious. Mr. Hook was one of the
pioneers of Oakland, where he located in 1873.
He was born in Arrow Rock, Mo., in 1837, re-
ceived his education in his native place and the
University of the Pacific, located in Santa Clara,
Cal. After graduation he accepted a clerkship
in Martinez, and later on engaged in mercantile
pursuits at Pacheco, Contra Costa county, Cal.,.
pursuing this business until 1872, when he sold
out and removed to Oakland. The following year
he established a furniture and carpet business on
the corner of Eleventh and Broadway and after
continuing there for twelve years, he located on
the corner of Thirteenth and Broadway, and
finally erected a handsome three-story build-
ing for the accommodation of his business.
He established his business in this block on
Twelfth street, placed a large and well-selected
stock of furniture, carpets and other household
fixtures and engaged actively in business until
his death, which occurred in 1896. He had also
built a two-story warehouse in 1893, intended for

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

the storage of furniture, carpets, etc., and in
other ways had added materially to the progress
of the city. By his close attention to business,
his fair dealing and honest methods he won the
continued friendship of his patrons and be-
queathed to his sons a lucrative business.

In 1858 Mr. Hook was united in marriage with
Miss Nannie P. Henderson, of Santa Clara
county, Cal., and they became the parents of the
following children : William P., now president
of the firm of Hook Brothers Company ; Mary E.
Breck; and Henry P. Elijah Hook was a stanch
advocate of Republican principles, was a man
well versed on all current topics, and took an
active part in the upbuilding and development of
the city of Oakland. He was associated frater-
nally with the Independent Order of Odd Fel-
lows and the Ancient Order of United Workmen.

WALTER BALFOUR HARRUB.

Perhaps no citizen of California has been more
closely in touch with its progress and develop-
ment since pioneer days than Walter Balfour
Harrub, who came to the state "in the days of
old, in the days of gold, in the days of '49," and
during the many years since in which the com-
monwealth grew he has been more or less active
in every branch of its ordinary development —
agriculture, stock-raising, merchandising, mining,
and in all proving the sturdy qualities of his New
England ancestry. Mr. Harrub is now a resi-
dent of Oakland, where his home has been located
for more than thirtv years of this time, and is
in the enjoyment of a retirement well earned by
his stanch efforts in early life and the successful
accumulation of a competence.

Born July 16, 1830, in Plymouth county,
Mass., and within eight miles of the town of
Plymouth, Walter Balfour Harrub was a son of
Thomas Bowers Harrub. His mother died when
he was a child, and at the age of ten years he
was thrown upon his own resources. He went to
Pembroke to learn the trade of shoemaker with

107

an uncle, to whom his brother had been bound,
and he remained there until he had learned the
trade. But the confinement proving too much
for him, he took up instead the work of a cooper
in New Bedford, becoming an apprentice of
Caleb L. Ellis, the understanding between them
being that he was to remain as long as it was
mutually agreeable. The apprenticeship was
ended by Mr. Ellis and others fitting up the
barque Pleiades for California, made famous
by the discovery of gold the year previous. Mr.
Harrub decided to come on that vessel to the
Pacific coast, as did quite a numl>er of other-,
all taking a part in the ship's cargo, he represent-
ing Mr. Ellis' interest. They left N'ew Bedford,
February 9, 1849, an(^ were two hundred and
eighteen days making the trip, which was the
most perilous one. because of rough weather,
ever made by their captain.

Before leaving their home Mr. Harrub and
nine others formed a company to work together
in the new land to which they were going, and
accordingly upon landing in San Francisco, Sep
tember 18, 1849, they set out en masse for Mar\»-
ville. Being stopped at Vernon because of low
water, and as a sand bar had formed there ( thi«
being where the Yuba, Feather and P.ear riv< r-
emptied into the Sacramento river V they decided
to make Fremont their headquarters and ac-
cordingly cut trees, made puncheons, and put up
a comfortable story and a half frame house. They
had left a large part of their supplies at San
Francisco and Mr. Harrub went back after them,
but before he could get them and return he wi<
taken very ill and for many months his life even
was despaired of. Shortly before iu9 fever
broke there was a consultation of pbysician-* and
they decided that he would die lx*forc another
dav ; he overheard them, but said nothing, not
even when a friend came to him and spoke cheer-
fully about his soon beincr well. Six weeks later
he was taken out into the sunshine for the first
time in months, and from that time on his im-
provement was rapid. Tn the spring he went on
to Marysville and from there to Foster'- Bar, hc-
ing directed to the spot where a youncr '"an had
been working the fall before and believed c°'fl
would be found in abundance. Mr. Harnih hired

408

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

some Indians to take him to the place and there
he staked off ten claims, one for each member of
the party, and six of them came up there later,
while the others remained at work at their trades.
They were quite successful here, and the next
winter they passed in Fremont. For letters at
the mines, they paid one dollar each, so high
were such conveniences at that time.

The next spring Mr. Harrub and a Mr. Palmer
opened a hotel four miles from Fremont on the
Sacramento river, and made considerable money ;
this they invested in hay, putting up seven stacks,
and had sold only one of them when hay became
a drug on the market. Mr. Flarrub then accepted
an offer to take charge of the dining department
of a hotel at Shasta, and this he managed for
some time. Then again becoming interested in
mining through a miner who had located some
splendid claims up north and wanted him to
come and join them, he gave this up and went
north, and the only claim that was worth any-
thing was the one he drew, as they were allotted
by drawing. Later he went on a prospecting trip
with five others, during which he encountered
many adventures and perils, and found a very
valuable gold mine, which, however, they could
not work because of no tools and the lateness of
the season. Others therefore profited by their
find, their discovery being turned over to four
sailors, who had been hunting in that locality and
had furnished them with fresh wild game during
their stay. On their way to the mining district
members of the company disagreed as to direc-
tions given for making camp; but Mr. Harrub,
having paid close attention, was certain of the
place and told them so, but some persisted in try-
ing their own way first. Later they came back
and joined Mr. Harrub and those who had gone
with him, as they had found the camping place
without difficulty. While going in this direction
they met some Indians who warned them not to
camp in the little valley that looked so inviting to
the weary travelers. On their way home they
had to cross the Sacramento river seven times,
and being in a hurry to reach their destination
they at first decided not to stop for anything.
However, a number of their party desired to stop
at a trading post which they had reached, and

here the party took a vote as to the advisability
of continuing their journey; the majority ruled,
they having agreed that such should be the case
in all matters. They continued and made their
last croc°;ncr of the Sacramento that night. They
learned afterward that the post with all its in-
habitants had been destroyed that night by the
Indians.

Mr. Harrub again took his position in the
hotel in Shasta for a time, then went back to
mining the following spring, being located thirty
miles northwest of Shasta. Later he went up on
the Yuba and in Grass valley met with moderate
success. At that time he began teaming from
Sacramento to Grass valley, taking orders for
the settlers and miners, and also became in-
terested in the buying and selling of stock. In
this connection he located a ranch about sixteen
miles from Sacramento with a range that ex-
tended for thirty-five miles, and upon this he
ran large herds. He continued teaming and the
operation of his ranch, and had many discourage-
ments along with his successes, losing many of
his horses through an epidemic of glanders. Also
they had a drouth in i860 and 1861, during
which Mr. Harrub was compelled to drive his
stock over the mountains into Nevada for feed,
locating that summer at Donner lake, the place
where the Donner party suffered such hardships
in the snow and cold. They had to make their
way out of that locality through snow two and a
half feet deep in early fall, but succeeded in get-
ting out with all of their stock. He then located
a winter range in Long Valley, Nevada, making
a trail to his grazing lands from Dog valley,
which is to-day the main trail in that section.
His men spent that winter in Long valley and
Mr. Harrub returned to California, and in the
spring brought his cattle there to be butchered at
the time the pony express brought the news of
Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand volun-
teers for service in the approaching conflict be-
tween the north and the south. About this time
Mr. Harrub went to Dayton and bought the
butchering interests of that city and conducted
a large business, making a satisfactory success
for three years, during which he had several de-
livery wagons which took his meats throughout

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

that section. Another of his enterprises was the
purchase of a stage line from Dayton to Virginia
City, and another to Washoe City, carrying ex-
press and mail, and also fast freight, for some
time. While thus occupied he built the Ruby
Hill water works that supplied water for all the
mines in that vicinity, this being in 1876. There
were two pipe lines, in all ten miles of pipe, with
tanks made of redwood three inches thick, and
with twenty-two hundred and fifty pounds of
iron in hoops on each tank, which had a capacity
of fifty thousand gallons each, besides a large
I reservoir in New York canyon, which he after-
! wards abandoned. After disposing of both his
meat business in Dayton and his stage lines, Mr.
Harrub engaged in mining for a time, and then
contracted with the Richmond Company to handle
their ore and charcoal, which was very profitable,
as the company controlled the lead market of the
world, having the largest refinery in the United
States. He ran many wagons and teams and
probably did the heaviest teaming ever done in
' the state, running eighteen horses and mules to a
wagon and two trailers.

In 1874 Mr. Harrub came to Oakland where
his family has since lived, although he retained
his interests in various mines for many years, and
also with other enterprises, owning an automatic
gas machine manufactory which he conducted un-
til the factory burned down in 1901. He did not
rebuild and since that time has lived in retire-
ment, owning various properties in different sec-
tions of California, among which is a fine vine-
yard of raisin grapes in Fresno county. When
he first came to this section Mr. Harrub pur-
chased property near the present site of Fruitvale
and built four houses, in the years since having
disposed of three, retaining one — No. 1266
Twenty-sixth avenue, — where he has made his
home since 1907.

Mr. Harrub has been twice married, his first
wife being Frankie Reed, daughter of George
and Catherine Reed, to whom were born four
children, one now surviving, Ida May. wife of
Walter A. Kinney, a citizen of Oakland. In
Eureka, Nev., Mr. Harrub was united in mar-
riage with Catherine J. Flavin, and they became
the parents of two children, Walter, who died at

409

the age of three and a half years, and Katherinc,
wife of Edwin Giffith. Mr. Harrub has always
been a stanch advocate of Republican principles,
although his many business activities have pre-
cluded the possibility of his holding public office.
He is a life member of the Society of California
Pioneers and gives his best support to the preser-
vation of early landmarks that noted the pioneer
era. He has had many opportunities to become
wealthy, especially in the Ruby Hill water works.
Water being very difficult to obtain, he could not
enlist the financial support of the mine owners,
so undertook the task alone with the promise
from them that they would take stock if he did
succeed and would incorporate. He did succeed
and about that time took a trip to Europe and
while away, water was struck in the mines and in
consequence lessened the value of his enterprise.
Mr. Harrub is a self-made man in the best sense
implied by the term, for with nothing but cour-
age, energy, ability trained and integrity in-
herited, he set forth in the world in childhood to
win his own way, and against many odds and
almost insurmountable obstacles has attained a
worthy success, has won a wide circle of friends,
and well deserves the high place he holds among
the representative citizens of California.

CHARLES McDOXALD.

The best part of the life of Charles McDonald
has been passed on the Pacific coast, where he
participated in the upbuilding of civilization and
the development of resources which have made
this section of the country equal to any on the
western continent. He is now retired from the
active cares which have so long engrossed his
attention and in the city of Oakland is rounding
out the years of a well-spent manhood. \ S
tish ancestry gave to him the sturdy charactcri--
tics which have been noticeable feature* in his
successful career, his parents being William and
Sarah (Arbuckle) McDonald: the father mi ■
native of the Highlands of Scotland, while the

410

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

mother was born in Nova Scotia. They were the
parents of eleven children, of whom Charles Mc-
Donald was the third child and second son. He
was born in Pictou, Nova Scotia, February 20,
1834, and under the influence of home life and the
training of his father, who was a man of unusual
force of character, was reared to years of ma-
turity. He received his education in a subscrip-
tion school in Pictou, where he prepared and en-
tered the college academy. After completing the
work he was apprenticed to learn the trade of
blacksmith, being influenced to this mainly be-
cause of his strong mechanical ability. Later he
traveled as a journeyman and visited many
places, in which occupation he gained a more ex-
tended knowledge of his trade.

Like many other young men, Mr. McDonald's
attention at this time was strongly attracted to-
ward the Pacific coast, where the . discovery of
gold some years previous had led to a rapid civili-
zation. He decided to try his fortunes here and
accordingly took passage on a sailing vessel
bound for San Francisco in 1858. This trip,
which covered a period of months, was not de-
void of adventure, for they met with many ac-
cidents and delays ; in rounding the Horn they
neared a vessel in distress with a number of pas-
sengers and a heavy cargo aboard. All lives were
saved and a large portion of the cargo before
the destruction of the vessel. The captain of
his vessel took possession of a large quantity of
the goods, setting it aside as contraband, which
he intended to sell for his own benefit. In the
rescuing of this the crew was entitled to a cer-
tain per ceryt, but the captain refusing to di-
vide or allow what was due them brought about
his own exposure and the goods were taken
from him and placed in possession of their prop-
ers owners. After arriving in San Francisco Mr.
McDonald cast about for something to occupy
his time, and soon found employment at his
trade, which he carried on profitably for a time.
Being then offered a lucrative position in Seat-
tle, Wash., he went north and began work there,
but soon afterward engaged in business for him-
self, establishing a shop and employing a force
of men and soon building up an extensive trade
along this line. His close attention to busi-

ness and his thorough knowledge along this line,
as well as the dispatch with which orders were
executed, led to success, and with the passing
years he found his profits in the enterprise en-
abling him to become the possessor of much
valuable real estate in that city. He practically
retired from business in 1889, and at that time
located in Oakland, where he has since made his
home. He retains his property in Seattle and
gives his attention entirely to looking after his
personal interests. While living in Seattle he
had the contract to execute the iron work on the
first steam railroad out of that city, and also
the work for the first street-car line laid in Seat-
tle. For five terms he was a member of the citv
council, and was one of those who preserved the
water-front to the city, as he was always opposed
to giving such franchises to the Northern Pacific
Railroad, who at the time were trying to get
them for nothing. Since then, however, they
have had to pay over $3,000,000 for about one-
tenth of what they formerly asked for.

Mr. McDonald was united in marriage with
Miss Elizabeth A. Arbuckle, and born of this
union are five children, namely : William R.r
Ida May, Joseph F., Carrie E. and Charles A.
The family home is at No. 1353 Tenth avenue
and both within and without reflects the com-
fort and culture with which he is able to sur-
round himself and wife in the evening of their
days. Although always actively engaged in busi-
ness affairs Mr. McDonald has taken an active in-
terest in the public welfare of his country ; for a
few years after his location in this country he
affiliated with the Democratic party, but has since
endorsed the principles advocated in the plat-
form of the Republican party, especially on all
state and national issues. He is a prominent
Mason, being a member of St. John's Lodge
No. 9, at Seattle, Wash., of which he is past
master, and was presented with an honorary mem-
bership for being the oldest past master in the
lodge. He also belongs to the Ancient Order of
United Workmen in the same city. The suc-
cess which has attended the efforts of Mr. Mc-
Donald along a business line has been entirely
the result of his own personal qualities, for he
began life with nothing but the courage, ability

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

413

and energy characteristic of the Scot, and against
hardship and deprivation worked his way to the
top, accumulated property, and in his declining
years seeks the rest and retirement which he
has so justly won. He is held in high esteem by
all who know him and is appreciated for his
worth as a citizen.

WILLIAM M. MENDENHALL,

In the closest sense implied by the term, Will-
iam M. Mendenhall is a pioneer of California,
and as such has passed through the hardships
and dang-ers which were of a necessity the warp
and woof of its present greatness. Mr. Menden-
hall comes of a New England family whose
members were prominent in the colonial history
of our country. His father, William Mendenhall,
was born in 1794 in Tennessee, and following the
example of his forefathers, served in the war
of 1812. He married in Ohio Miss Sarah Peter-
son, a native of Virginia, and with his wife
established his home in Greene county, Ohio,
where the father purchased new lands, cleared
and improved them and made that place his home
for a number of years. His father was one of
the first settlers of Ohio and the founder of
Jamestown. In 1831 William removed to the
more remote west, and purchasing land in Cass
county, Mich., there engaged in general farm-
ing and stock-raising. His son having preceded
him to California, the father brought his family
to the Pacific coast in 1853 and located them,
first in Contra Costa county, where he followed
farming pursuits for some time. His death oc-
curred in Alameda county in his seventy-ninth
year. His wife, who survived him, also died in
Alameda county, when she was eighty-four years
of age.

William M. Mendenhall was the eldest son
in the family of his parents, his birth having
occurred near Xenia, Ohio, April 22, 1823. He
passed his early boyhood and school days in three
different states, without the advantages of the

youth of the present day, with its easily accessible
high schools and colleges. In July, 1845, when
a young man of twenty-two years, he with nine
companions, Lanccford Hastings, X. B. .Smith,
H. C. Smith, Ira Stebbins, Helms Downing,
D. Semple, Attorney Xash, Crosby, and Will-
iam Loker, met at Independence, Mo., where
they laid in supplies, then with pack horses and
mules started on the perilous trip across the
plains. They left on August 17. This journey
was not only per-ilous because of the hostiliu ..i
the Indians, but because of the hardships which
had to be borne on every side. The attacks of
the Indians were often severe, and when their
supplies were in danger of being exhausted thej
used their guns to kill buffaloes, with which the
prairies and woods abounded. At one time Mr.
Mendenhall thought he had made a great sh t.
but it proved to be a wild Rocky Mountain dog,
weighing over two hundred pounds. These dogs
were savage, and added to the difficulties and
dangers incident to the great herds of buffaloes
which threatened often to tramp down horses and
camp and men.

All these dangers, however, were passed
through without serious mishap to any of the
company, and on Christmas eve of that year Mr.
Mendenhall and . his companions arrived safely
at the American river in California. They im-
mediately took up their quartern in Sutter's t'<>rt.
The Spaniards were then in control of the state,
and were so unfriendly to the American- that
none of them was allowed to travel without a
passport. Finally a proclamation was issued tfiat
all Americans must leave California, and it was
only at the peril of their live* that they might
remain. Mr. Mendenhall. being short of funds,
was at the time employed in a lumber mill, in the
Moroga redwoods, in Alameda county, which
was conducted on a very primitive plan, the lum-
ber made by what is called the whip-saw. He
returned for refuge to Sutter's Fort, where the
Americans determined to remain in California
in spite of Castro's orders. Their fir«t ^tmteq-ic
feat was that of twentv-four young men who de-
scended on Fort Sonoma and captured it in the
opening onslaught, without firing a gun. In
June. 1846. the Bear flag was raised. Col. John

414

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

C. Fremont was then on his way to Oregon.
Men were sent to inform him of the troublous
conditions. He at once returned and soon after
the small company to which Mr. Mendenhall be-
longed joined Fremont at Fort Sonoma. In the
meantime a man-of-war had been sent by the
Federal government to San Francisco bay with
the stars and stripes at the masthead. The
war craft bore an American flag for Sutter's
Fort, and the Bear flag was hauled down. As
the national colors were run up, the little garri-
son saluted, and at once began plans to place
the whole state under the sovereignty of the
American people. Fremont at the head of a force
of one hundred and seventy men started to take
the state by march, going through to San Diego,
and wresting control from the Spaniards without
losing a man. Mr. Mendenhall was one of that
historic party that took the whole country.

These troubles ended, Mr. Mendenhall went
to San Francisco and there engaged in business.
In 1847 ne married in Santa Clara county, Miss
Mary Allen, who had crossed the plains with
her parents the previous year, her father, David
Allen, being one of the pioneer settlers of the
state. Mr. and Mrs. Mendenhall were the first
American couple to be married south of the
Sacramento river, and he is now the only sur-
vivor of the Bear Flag party. After marriage
Mr. Mendenhall remained in Santa Clara county
and there engaged in a successful conduct of
the stock business and remained so occupied until
1853. In this year he disposed of his interests,
and going to Contra Costa county undertook the
operation of a stock ranch. After fifteen years
in this pursuit he came to Alameda county and
purchased twelve hundred acres of land in Liver-
more. This he sold for the most part, and now
owns four hundred and eighty acres, upon which
is situated some celebrated springs, for years
conducted as a health resort and known as
Mendenhall Springs.

Mrs. Mendenhall died in March, 1903, aged
seventy-two years. Mr. Mendenhall is now in
his eighty-sixth year, enjoying good health
and retains his faculties to an unusual degree. He
is an entertaining companion in his recollection
of the early days of this western state, the pi-

oneer effort of which went toward its upbuild-
ing and development. In 1869 he laid out the
town of Livermore on a six hundred acre tract,
started the town, gave ground for schools and
all public utilities, roads, etc. He erected Liver-
more College on seven acres and maintained the
institution for several years. He built a beauti-
ful home, costing $9,000, which was sold later
and is now occupied as a sanitarium. While he
has never held official position, yet he has taken
a keen interest in the political affairs of this
county, affiliating with the Democratic party, and
served as town trustee of Livermore for eight
years. He has been solicited many times for of-
fices but steadfastly refused. Though a Demo-
crat, he is an ardent admirer of Theodore Roose-
velt. He was a member of the Vigilance com-
mittee of Contra Costa county, and is now a
member of the Society of California Pioneers.
He is living retired in Oakland, enjoying the
evening of his days in quiet and contentment.

Mr. and Mrs. Mendenhall became the parents
of a large family of children, namely: James
Monroe, of Pleasanton ; Elizabeth, wife of Curtis
H. Lindley of San Francisco ; Emma, wife of
James N. Block of San Francisco ; Ella, wife of
G. W. Langan of Oakland; David A., of Palo
Alto; William Wallace, of San Francisco; Os-
wald V., of San Francisco ; Effie, who died aged
two years; Asa V., an attorney of Oakland; and
Etta, wife of Fred A. Carrick of Oakland.

HENRY SHEPARD BRICKELL.

Among the representative business men of the
bay section and natives of the west, mention be-
longs to the gentleman whose name heads this
article. He was born in Virginia City, Nev., of
an old Pennsylvania family, his father, John
Brickell, having been born in Pittsburg, Pa., in
1828 and his grandfather, David Zilhart Brickell,
an early settler of that place. John Brickell re-
ceived a good education in the public schools of
Pittsburg, after which he was apprenticed to

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

416

learn the trade of pattern maker. When nine-
teen years of age he determined to come to Cali-
fornia, and accordingly took passage on the
bark Kirkland, bound for San Francisco, where
he arrived in October, 1849. Soon after his ar-
rival he secured work at his trade and continued
so engaged for two years, then was a ship chan-
dler for some time. He later removed the scene
of his labors to Virginia City, Nev., where he
established a lumber business and some time
afterward became connected with the Dick Sides
mines, which a few years later were merged
into the Consolidated Virginia Mining Company,
of Virginia City. This eventually brought large
returns to John Brickell. In 1868 he disposed of
his interests and returned to San Francisco,
where he identified himself with the commercial
life of the city. He became president of the
Clay Street Bank, which now is known as the
Savings and Loan Society, located at Sutter and
Montgomery streets; he retained this position
until his retirement from all active participation
in commercial affairs. He died October 27, 1894.
He was widely known through his business as-
sociations, held in high esteem for his force of
character, his business ability, and strict integrity
in all matters. His enterprise was a source
of much of the growth and development of San
Francisco and Oakland, and all public affairs
received substantial assistance from him. He
was united in marriage with Jennie A. Shepard,
also a native of Pittsburg. She came to Cali-
fornia in 1862. To Mr. and Mrs. John Brickell
were born the following children : Henry Shep-
ard, Louise D. Howard, John C, Helen Evadne
and Howard. The wife and mother passed away
March 1 1, 1900.

Henry S. Brickell was only a child when
brought to California by his parents. He grew
to manhood in San Francisco, receiving his
education in the public schools. He served an
apprenticeship with the California Electrical
Works, which were located at No. 132 Sutter
street. After serving his regular time he went to
Virginia City and there installed the first elec-
trical plant in Nevada for John W. Mackay,
and likewise became interested in mining proper-
ties. After several vears in Nevada he returned

to California and in San Francisco entered into
real estate operations, becoming an extensive
holder of business property as well as other in-
vestments in the vicinity of San Francisco.

This section of California has been the scene
of his most successful operations, and his in-
terests here have lain parallel with San Franci-o.
and Oakland. While his connections have been
such that his own personal fortunes have been
materially advanced, he never has forgotten thi
duties of a loyal citizen, and has given his sup
port to all movements that favored the upbuild
ing of the state. He was married in 1899 to Miss
Gracibel Walker of Oakland, a daughter of
A. H. Walker, who has been associated with the
Southern Pacific Railway for thirty years. Two
children have been born to them, Russell Walker
and Joseph Shepard. Mr. Brickell is a member
of Oakland Lodge 171, B. P. O. E. He i> a
man of ability and energy, a progressive citizen,
and one who deservedly occupies a prominent
place among his fellow townsmen.

GALEN CLARK.

Not only as a pioneer of California, but the
pioneer as well of the famous Yosemite valley,
Galen Clark enjoys a distinction among the
early settlers of the state, held high in the ap-
preciation of both voting and old for the part
he took in the development of natural resource-
and the consequent supremacy of California
among the western commonwealths. Mr. Clark,
who is now living retired in Oakland, was born
in Canada East, March 28, 1814; his parents,
Jonas and Mary (Churchill) Clark, were native-
respectively of Townsend. Mass., and Dublin.
N. H., and were temporary residents in Canada
at the time this son was born. They were the
parents of fourteen children, of whom but two
are now living, the one besides Mr. Clark being
a daughter, Clarissa C, who was born in 1819
and is now residing in Peterboro, X. H. An
uncle. William, served over five years in the
Revolutionary war, participating in various im-

416

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

portant engagements, among them Bunker Hill
and Monmouth. The family were of English
extraction, the emigrating ancestor having arrived
in Boston about 1630 and settled in Concord some
time later.

Galen Clark was the tenth child and the
seventh son in the family of his parents, and
in the schools of Dublin, N. H., received his edu-
cation. In passing it may be said that this town
is now a famous resort, being situated near
Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. The
family being large, Galen was placed in the
home of a friend, with whom he remained from
the age of five to seventeen years, after which
he went to Genesee, N. Y., and there learned the
trades of chair-making and painting. He was
there employed by a cousin for the period of three
years, after which he went to Boston and spent
two years at his trade of painting, thence to
Philadelphia and from there to St. Louis, in
1837. He spent some time in traveling through-
out Missouri, Iowa and Illinois, and finally lo-
cated in Clark county, Mo., where he engaged
in farming and the prosecution of his two trades.
While residing in Missouri he married Miss Re-
becca McCoy, an aunt of the McCoy brothers of
Red Bluff, Cal. After seven years they returned
to Philadelphia and there. Mr. Clark worked for
his former employer. After the death of his wife
he went to New York with his employer, who
sold out and located there, and in 1853 he at-
tended the Crystal Palace Exposition, where a
piece of gold from California attracted his at-
tention westward.

In October of the same year Mr. Clark set out
for the far-famed land, taking passage on the
steamer American on her first trip to Aspinwall,
crossed part of the Isthmus on the railroad, went
up the Chagres river and thence on mule-back
to Panama. There he took passage on the Uncle
Sam and arrived in San Francisco November
27. Mr. Clark's only object in coming to Cali-
fornia was to secure his share of the fortune the
soil contained, when he would probably have
done like many others and returned to the east
to make his home. He went to Mariposa county
and worked along the Merced river, but was
taken sick in 1856, which compelled him to go

to the mountains, the year previous having wit-
nessed his first excursion into the Yosemite val-
ley. He built a cabin on the present site of the
Wawona hotel, and there hunted and fished for
years, in his different trips throughout the
country visiting the big trees of Mariposa county
and bringing them to the notice of the public.
The beginning of the tourist travel to the Yosem-
ite found him in the position of a restaurateur,
and for a long time his was the only place where
meals could be obtained. They were cooked over a
campfire and served on three legged stools, which
was the beginning of the Wawona hotel and
known at that time as Clark's station. He sold
out in 1875 to the Washburn Stage Company
and they gave the name to the place, which
means in the Indian language "big trees."
Upon the passage of the bill in June, 1864, mak-
ing the valley and trees a part of the state
property, Mr. Clark was appointed guardian of
same, being the only white person living in that
section of country at the time. For sixteen
years he continued in that position and only lost
it through the new law which provided that a
guardian could hold office only for a period of
four years. He then went to Sacramento on
business, spending a part of two winters during
the sessions of the legislature. In 1888 he was
reappointed by the commissioners guardian of
the Yosemite grant and re-appointed each year
for eight years, when he declined the office.
Since that time he has lived in retirement, hav-
ing built a cottage at Summerland, but since
1904 having passed his time with a daughter,
Mrs. Lee, in San Francisco until the fire of
1906, and since then in Oakland. Besides being
a lover of nature Mr. Clark had always taken
a prominent part in the upbuilding and develop-
ment of the country, serving as justice of the
peace, postmaster, and being ever ready to lend
his aid toward the furtherance of plans for the
general welfare of whatever community he made
his home. He is well read, and informed on all
topics of contemporary interest, and has pub-
lished two works relative to the early times, the
first, published in 1904, being entitled "Indians
of the Valley," and the other, in 1906, "Big
Trees."

HISTORICAL AND" BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

419

Mr. Clark had a family of five children, three
sons and two daughters, all but one born in Mis-
souri and the youngest in Philadelphia. The old-
est son, Joseph Locke, enlisted for service in
the Civil war in a Massachusetts regiment, and
was killed at the second battle of Bull Run.
The second son, Galen Alonzo, also enlisted for
service in the Civil war, under command of
Gen. Lew Wallace, whose private secretary he
became, but never saw active warfare, as the
close of hostilities followed shortly after his
enlistment. He was a graduate of Harvard,
and after ending his school days he came to Cali-
fornia and spent one year with his father, after
which he went to San Francisco to take up the
study of law. Death interrupted his efforts.
The youngest son, Solon McCoy, was drowned
at Peterboro, N. H. The daughters survive, one,
Mrs. Mary Ann Regan, a widow, living in
Springfield, Mass., with her family, and the
other, Elvira M. Lee, a physician, now resid-
ing in Oakland and engaged in the practice of
her profession, having formerly been located
in both Merced and San Francisco.

WILLIAM HARRINGTON MARSTON.

Varied interests have held the attention of
Captain Marston throughout a long and success-
ful business career, but chief among them was
that connected with a sea-faring life, which he
led for more than forty years. A native of
Maine, he was born in that state November 19.
1835, and in the public schools of Maine and
Massachusetts he received his education. He lost
his parents when he was but eight years old and
he thus found it necessary to become depend-
ent upon his own resources at an early age. In
1852 he shipped from Boston on a sailing vessel
bound for the north of Cuba and he remained
in this trade for three years, later making trips
to New Orleans and to Europe, and touching at
various ports of the Mediterranean. In i860 he
crossed the Isthmus of Panama for California.

and here took charge of a vessel in the lumber
trade between San Francisco and Pugct Sound
from there going to the Orient, then visited the
South seas and Australia. Then taking up trade
with the Hawaiian Islands, he was identified with
Welch & Co. (known as the Planters line ) who
had a regular line of vessels plying between San
Francisco and Honolulu, and later went to
Scotland and built two vessels for them. After
remaining in their employ for twenty years, in
1892 he gave up permanently his sea- faring life,
and has since devoted himself to the interests of
the business as superintendent of the company.
This company sold out to the Matson Naviga-
tion Company, of which Captain Marston is a
stockholder.

During the years of his busy career Captain
Marston has owned stock in thirty different ves-
sels and at the present writing has interest in
twenty. He is a director of the Boole Ship
Building Company of Oakland, is also a stock-
holder in the California Transportation Company,
a river boating enterprise, and is president of the
Ship Owners Association of San Francisco. He
has associated himself with numerous other en-
terprises of both San Francisco and Oakland,
being director of the First National Bank of
Berkeley, vice-president of the Seaboard Bank
of San Francisco; and a stockholder in the Rent-
ers Loan & Trust Company and Bank on Hayes
street, in San Francisco. In 1803 he moved to
Berkeley and bought his residence at the corner
of Vine and Arch streets, and has also built a
number of other residences here, while he owns
as well a ranch of two hundred acres in Vaca
valley, devoted to fruit raising. He has taken
a prominent part in public affairs in Berkclcv.
was elected a member of the city hoard and for
five vears was its president, while in San Fran-
cisco he served durincr the years 1005 and 1006
as president of the Oiamher of Commerce, of
which he is still an active member.

In San Francisco, in 1884. Captain Marston
was united in marriace with Mi" Tdclla Alice
Reed, daughter of Willard B. and Iconise Jane
(Smith) Reed, and thev became the parents of
six children : Fllerv. who died at the acre of three
vears: Sibyl. Flsa. Otis. Vera and Merle. Of

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

420

the personal character of Captain Marston too
much cannot be said, for throughout his long
career he has maintained a stanch integrity in
all business dealings, an unswerving honor and
honesty, and a genuine friendliness for those
about him, which have won him more than the
mere accumulation of wealth. No citizen occu-
pies a higher place in the esteem of his fellow-
townsmen and no citizen has done more to de-
serve the place accorded him.

WALTER SCOTT WILLIAMS.

One of the most successful attorneys-at-law in
Oakland is Walter Scott Williams, who was born
in the county of Prince Edward, Ontario, Ca-
nada, May 24, 1833, a son of Isaac Williams,
also a native of that county. The paternal grand-
father was born in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., whence
he removed to Ontario, where he reared his
family. Isaac Williams married Charlotte Her-
rington, a daughter of Moses Herrington, who
was also a resident of the county of Prince Ed-
ward. Walter Scott Williams was reared in
the paternal home, and during his boyhood at-
tended the public schools, later the Normal
schools at Toronto, and still later became a stu-
dent in Fairfield Academy, at Fairfield, N. Y.
Returning to Ontario he entered Victoria Col-
lege, in Coburg, and after completing the course
in that institution began the reading of law. He
was first in the office of Lewis Walbridge,
Queen's Council and Solicitor General of Cana-
da, and later he read with other eminent men of
that country. For a time he resided in Belle-
ville, but in 1863 he removed to Napanee, Onta-
rio, where he built up a large practice in his pro-
fession. His native ability, combined with the
personal qualities of character which won for
him the confidence of those with whom he came
in contact, brought him a noticeable success in
this field, among the positions of prominence he
filled there being that of attorney for the Bank
of British North America, the consular agency

for the United States for the period of seven
years, and the mayoralty of the city during the
years 1875, 1876 and 1877. He was keen to see
the advantage which could accrue to the town
from a railroad running to the north, which
would open up the back country, rich in iron and
other minerals, and it was this thought that led
him to originate the Napanee, Tamworth &
Quebec Railway, the name of which has since
been changed to the Bay of Quinte Railway and
Navigation Company. It was mainly through
his efforts that the different municipalities voted
bonuses to assist in building the road, and
through his energy and diplomacy he secured
enough aid from the government of the Domi-
nion of Canada to build the railroad. Mr. Wil-
liams was one of the directors, and its secretary,
attorney and financial agent for many years, in
fact until his removal to California. He also
gave considerable time and attention to the
furtherance of the cause of the Independent
Order of Good Templars, serving as the right
worthy grand counsellor of the Right Worthy
Grand Lodge of the World during the years
1869 and 1870, and as the right worthy grand
secretary from 1873 to 1880. His removal from
Napanee in 1889 was regretted by the citizens of
that place, who had come lo relv on him for
practical support and help in public affairs.
What, however, was the loss to Napanee was
California's gain, for he came direct to this state
at that time, and establishing himself in Oak-
land, has since built up an extensive clientele.
For a term he held the position of inspector of
a San Francisco bank, and is now a commissioner
of the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario,
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Quebec. He
gives the same attention to public affairs here
that he did in Napanee, and is always to be relied
upon in the furtherance of all movements for
the general welfare.

January 16, 1858, Mr. Williams was united
in marriage with Miss Elmira L. Huffman, and
born of this union are four daughters, all of
whom are married and live in Oakland. Named
in order of birth thev are as follows : Minnie,
the wife of William H. George ; Carrie, the wife
of Robert Mills; Nellie, the widow of Herbert

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

C. Parks, who was a brilliant young lawyer and
who died of consumption in California; and
Blanche, the wife of Rupert Whitehead. In
religion Mr. Williams is a member of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church and gives liberally to
its charities. Personally he is a man of much
geniality and friendliness, ever ready to hold out
a welcoming or helping hand, is energetic and
ambitious and has deservedly won the position
he holds in the esteem of the citizens of Oak-
land. Fraternally he is associated with the In-
dependent Order of Odd Fellows, the Masons,
and the Independent Order of Good Templars.

In the latter part of the year of 1836 and during
the year 1837 a rebellion occurred in Canada
which was supported by some of the best citi-
zens and opposed by many equally respectable,
among whom was John Shibley Huffman, of the
county of Hastings, in the province of Ontario,
a wealthy farmer and a large land owner, the
father of Mrs. Williams, also by Isaac Williams,
of the county of Prince Edward, province of
Ontario, also a wealthy farmer and a large land
owner, the father of Mr. Williams ; both of these
gentlemen were loyal to the British Crown and
did what they could to put down the rebellion.
For their devotion to the government, the late
Lord Elgin, the governor-general of Canada,
commissioned under the Great Seal of the Do-
minion of Canada, Messrs. Huffman and Will-
iams, justices of the peace for their respective
counties, positions which they held for thirty
years or until their deaths. Throughout their
lives both held many other official positions of
trust and were prominent politically as well as in
the Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada.

In the year 1873 the Dominion government
determined to inform the people of Great Britain
and Ireland of the values, in Canada, to those
seeking investments in their land and homes for
capitalists and their surplus population and they
commissioned Mr. Williams, the subject of this
article, to represent them in the Old World. On
the 14th of June, 1873, the County Council of
the county of Lennox and Addington, province
of Ontario, of which he was a member, unani-
mously adopted the following resolution, moved
by Mr. Booth and seconded bv E. Perrv.

That, whereas the members of the County
Co uncil of the county of Lennox and Adding-
ton have learned with pleasure that the govern-
ment of the Dominion of Canada has appointed
Walter S. Williams. Esq., Deputy Reeve of the
town of Napanee, a special emigration agent to
Great Britain, they hereby tender their congrat-
ulations to Mr. Williams upon his appointment
and believe the government has acted wisely and
judiciously in selecting one who has had so much
experience and knowledge in regard to our
municipal institutions, legal matters and the gen-
eral wants and requirements of our country, and
we extend to Mr. Williams and to Mrs. Williams
who accompanies him, our best wishes for a
pleasant and prosperous voyage and a safe re-
turn to their native country and family after his
work is completed in the Old Country.

The County Council of the county of Lennox
and Addington was a small parliament and com-
posed of twenty-one members and elected by a
popular vote of the inhabitants of the said coun-
ty. Mr. Williams spent several months in Eng-
land, Ireland, Scotland and France, and brought
many capitalists to Canada and a large number
of men with their families, who became profitable
and wealthy farmers and citizens.

Mr. Williams is largely interested in some
valuable mines in the Tavichie Camp, which are
over five hundred miles south of the City of
Mexico in the Republic of Mexico, and distant
from the ancient and beautiful city of Oaxaca
about thirty-three miles. Mr. Williams is pre>i ;
ent of both of said companies.

HARRY W. PULCfFER

Named among the prominent and success ful
lawyers of Oakland is Harry W. Pulcifer. who
for the past ten years has been engaged in the
practice of his profession. He is a native of
Maine, born in i860: his father. Alexander W.
Pulcifer, also a native of that state, was a pioneer
of California in 1852. crossing the Isthmus of

422

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Panama, and thence coming by steamer to San
Francisco. Like the great majority of the settlers
at that time he engaged in mining for a time,
and after acquiring some means returned to his
home in the east. About this time the Civil war
called him into military service and in the Six-
teenth Regiment, Maine Infantry, he served for
three years and participated in many important
engagements, in which he was twice wounded.
Returning to his home in Maine, he remained
there until 1876, in which year he again came to
California, bringing his family with him and lo-
cating in Oakland, where he has ever since re-
sided. Besides Harry W., he had three children,
Alexander being pastor of a church at Crockett,
Cal. ; a daughter who married R. Timm, a promi-
nent lumberman of Sacramento ; and Ernestine,
who lives with her brother, Harry W.

Being but seven years old when brought to
Oakland, Harry W. Pulcifer received his educa-
tion in the schools of this city, graduating from
the high school and then entering the law office of
Henry Vrooman, then one of the most prominent
lawyers and successful politicians in the city. He
remained in that office until Mr. Vrooman's death,
when he went into the accounting department of
the Southern Pacific Railroad Company. During
this time he was also engaged in the study of law,
and in 1894 he entered the law office of Davis &
Hill, who were at that time leading attorneys for
the city of Oakland in their fight to control the
water front, and who were also prominent poli-
ticians. Admitted to the bar in 1897 he remained
with the firm for about six months, and in 1898
opened up an office for himself, since which time
he has been engaged in a successful practice of his
profession. He has won many friends and has
built up a wide clientele, which has placed him in
the front ranks of professional men of Oakland
and the bay country.

Mr. Pulcifer was united in marriage with Miss
Nightingill of Marysville, Cal., daughter of G. F.
Nightingill, a pioneer of 1849. He crossed the
plains to California and became prominent in the
public affairs of the state, serving as town marshal
for a number of years. He was afterward em-
ployed in the San Francisco mint until his death.
His brother, A. L. Nightingill, was secretary of

the state of Nevada for many years. Mr. and
Mrs. Pulcifer are the parents of three children,
Royce, Harry and Marian. Mr. Pulcifer has found
time to ally himself strongly with the Republican
party, taking an active and prominent part in both
city and county politics. In fraternal circles he is
also prominent, being a member of Oakland
Lodge No. 188, F. & A. M. ; Oakland Lodge No.
103, K. of P.; Oakland Lodge No. 171, B. P. 0.
E. ; the Nile Club, and in memory of his father's
services to his country in 1861 he belongs to the
Sons of Veterans.

DAVID W. REDDING.

The pioneer instinct was inherited by David
W. Redding, for, as a child, he was taken by his
parents to the wild region of Michigan, where, in
the timbered lands and among the Indians, they
sought to hew out a farm and establish a home.
There the father died in 1848, still too early to
realize the advance of civilization which should
be made in the coming years. David W. Red-
ding was born in Yates county, N. Y., April 9,
1829, and in 1834 removed to Michigan, where he
grew to manhood. He was one of a family of
seven children, of whom but two are living, a
sister residing in Michigan. The family were of
colonial stock, the father being a native of New
Jersey and the mother of New York.

In young manhood David W. Redding began
to learn the trade of cabinet-maker and carpen-
ter, working in a shop of this kind in Mishawaka,
Ind. Because of impaired health he came to Cali-
fornia in 1867, not intending to stay, but upon
recovering his health he secured work at $4 per
day. He remained here until 1876, in which year
he went back for a visit to his home in Michigan,
but his longing for California was so great that
he soon returned, and has ever since remained
contentedly in the west. For the greater part of
his time he has engaged as a journeyman, but at
one time with two others he established a hard-
ware business. They conducted the enterprise

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

4iTj

for about a year, when Mr. Redding sold to C.
G. Reed, and returned to carpenter work. In
1880 he went to Oregon and there worked in
building houses and boats on the Rogue river,
and for the ensuing nine years made that place
his home. In 1868 he had purchased a place on
Fifteenth street, near Clay, and this he sold while
in Oregon. Returning to California about 1889,
he erected the home now occupied by the family
at 1 168 West street. He was married in Michi-
gan in 1855 to Miss Mary Bradt, who died early,
leaving a daughter, Hattie, who is now the wife
of John Mathews, whose father, Peter Mathews,
was an old pioneer. Mr. Redding's second mar-
riage united him with Mrs. Elizabeth (Mann)
Allen, who was taken by her parents to Nevada
when seven years old and there made her home
until 1872, in which year she came to Oakland.
Her father was a manufacturer in the east and
a miner and tavern keeper after coming to Cali-
fornia. In politics Mr. Redding has always been
a stanch advocate of Republican principles, al-
though personally he has never cared for official
recognition. In religion he is a member of the
Christian Science church.

JAMES ALEXANDER FORBES.

An interesting career was that of James Alex-
ander Forbes, one of the earliest pioneers of Cali-
fornia, and for many years an upbuilder of its
interests after permanently making this state his
home. Born of a noble family in Inverness, De-
colloden, Scotland, January 7, 1803, he was the
son of Sir Edward John Forbes, physician to the
queen for many years, while other members of
the family were associated with the Bank of
England and were otherwise prominent in public
affairs. Mr. Forbes was highly educated and be-
came professor of both languages and music in a
college in Inverness. He entered the service of
Spain and fought against the Moors and in a se-
vere engagement was left upon a Spanish vessel
for dead; he was finally picked up and found to

be severely injured, but after having his skull
trepanned rapidly recovered his health. Follow-
ing this he came to California on a Spanish man-
of-war, as an officer, then being a very young
man, and during this trip became a warm friend
of a Franciscan monk who converted him from
Protestantism to Catholicism. He remained but
a brief time here, then returned to Scotland, came
a second time, and finally was sent out by the
English government to write a history of Cali-
fornia in the interests of the Hudson Bay Com-
pany, which history was sent to England and
published. Later he was appointed the second
English consul in California and resided for some
years in Yerba Buena, then removed to the Mis-
sion in Santa Clara county, where he was dis-
charging the duties of English consul at the time
of the American invasion. He was interested in
many of the most important movements in the
development of the country and was ever found
ready to advance the cause of civilization. Me
built a beautiful brick residence in Santa Clara
(having sold his residence to the Santa Clara Col-
lege), putting in all modern conveniences, such
as speaking tubes, dumb waiters, etc., and bring-
ing knives, forks, cook stoves, etc., from Eng-
land, the first to be brought into California. He
built a stone mill at Los Gatos, machinery for
which was brought from England, and manufac-
tured the best flour in the state. He was owner
of the Almaden mines and took out enormous
sums of money, which was brought to his home in
sacks as large as those used for potatoes, and
piled about the rooms much the same as one
would potatoes. Later he had trouble over min-
ing interests and during the ensuing litigation of
twenty-two years lost the greater part of his
early fortune. He then went to work in the con-
duct of a clrug store, he being himself a physician,
and this he continued for some years, while he
also carried on all business for the Spanish peo-
ple because of his fluent use of the language.

Mr. Forbes married a native daughter of Cali-
fornia, his wife being in maidenhood Anita
Marie Galindo, who was born at the Presidio,
in Yerba Buena, July 29, 1818. Thev were mar-
ried July 4, 1833. and afterward Mrs. Forbes
completed an already fine education, by learning

426

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

to sing, from her husband. She had a Mexican
grant in her own right known as the Stockton
Rancho, part of the present site of San Jose, of
which one-half was given to Commodore Stock-
ton by Mr. Forbes at the time of the American
occupation, and also owned property in San
Francisco, a parcel of which was the present loca-
tion of the Hibernia Bank of that city. They
lived for a time in San Francisco, where Mr.
Forbes built a beautiful home, but later removed
to Oakland, where Mr. Forbes passed away at the
age of seventy-seven years. Mrs. Forbes' father,
Juan Crissotomo Galindo, lived to be one hun-
dred and one years old. Mr. and Mrs. Forbes
became the parents of twelve children, namely :
Charles H., deceased, who, for more than forty
years, was employed in the legal affairs of Colo-
nel Baker's widow of Los Angeles ; Martha Elea-
nor, deceased, who married A. R. Tompkins and
had seven children ; James Alexander, Jr., singer,
translator of records and searcher of San Fran-
cisco for nineteen years, who was sent to Mex-
ico as consul, and is now in Guadalajara in
mining interests ; Miguel G, a poet living in
Los Angeles ; Frederick, deceased, and formerly
a linguist and translator in the courts of San
Francisco; James Alonzo, justice of the peace
at Kings City, Cal. ; Louis P., deceased, formerly
a druggist in San Jose for eighteen years ; Clara
Frances, wife of J. D. Sunol ; John T., employed
with a firm in Oakland for twenty-two years ;
Margaret, deceased ; Frank Howard, a druggist
employed for years in Oakland and San Fran-
cisco ; and Alfred, deceased. All the children were
born in California and all educated in the state,
the sons being honored graduates of Santa Clara
College. The sons were all talented, inheriting
their literary ability from their father, he being a
writer of more than ordinary merit for years. He
compiled several text books which were in use
for a number of years in California, was corre-
spondent for the Illustrated London News and
other papers, while he wrote a hymnal which
was used for many years by the first mission-
aries of the state. In later years he wrote
for the Argonaut. He was always a man of
prominence in public affairs, served in the state
legislature, was one of the first trustees of Santa

Clara College, while the first organ ever brought
to California was at his expense for the use of
the Old Mission. He was thoroughly posted on
the Bible, was a musician of unusual ability, and
during the early days in San Jose taught the
Indians to play the flute and other musical instru-
ments, and also taught them the Spanish lan-
guage and singing. His name is one that will
always be remembered when the advancement
and development of California is mentioned, for
he was one of the courageous and self-sacrificing
pioneers, without whose efforts nothing of this
success could ever have been accomplished.

EDSON ADAMS.

Descended from one of the early colonial
families, and endowed by inheritance with those
sterling traits of character which distinguished
those hardy settlers, Edson Adams was emi-
nently fitted for the part he played in the upbuild-
ing and development of the bay country of Cali-
fornia, where for nearly forty years he made his
home. The first paternal ancestor who located
on American soil was Edward Adams, who es-
tablished the name in New Haven, Conn., in
1640, while four years later the immigrating an-
cestor on the maternal side, Edward Nash, be-
came a resident of Norwalk, Conn. Edson
Adams was born in Fairfield county, Conn., May
18, 1824, and in his native state received his edu-
cation, after which, at an early age, he engaged
in trade. The gold discovery of 1849 m Cali-
fornia led him to immigrate to the Pacific coast,
and accordingly he took passage on a steamer in
January of that year and arrived in San Fran-
cisco in July of the same year. In the following
September he went to the mines and pursued
the work for a few months, returning to San
Francisco in March, 1850, and proceeding to
an examination of the bay country with a view
to establishing a town. May 16, 1850, he located
permanently at a point now known as the foot of
Broadway, Oakland, taking up one hundred and

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

sixty acres of what was then public domain. His
property lay on either side of the present Broad-
way and extended from the estuary of San An-
tonio north to the present location of Fourteenth
street. At that time the country was a wilder-
ness and Mr. Adams was the first settler. Others
followed, among the first of whom were Andrew
Moon and H. W. Carpentier.

In the latter part of 185 1 Mr. Adams, with Mr.
Carpentier and Mr. Moon, employed Julius Kel-
lersberger and others to survey, lay out and set
the stakes, and make maps and plats (which in-
cluded the properties of the three gentlemen) for
the present city of Oakland. Mr. Adams was
elected to fill various offices and discharged the
duties incumbent upon him in an efficient man-
ner, and with a public spirit worthy of a pioneer
gave himself over to the task of bringing civili-
zation to the remote corners of the Pacific coast.
The disadvantages under which he and other
public spirited citizens who were associated with
him in this enterprise worked were such as to
almost render such an undertaking hopeless, for
as a rule the first settlers were single men who
preferred to spend their time in the mines rather
than assist in the upbuilding of a town in which
they would probably not care to reside perma-
nently. The citizens of San Francisco were slow
in making Oakland their home because of poor
ferry accommodations, the only means of travel
at first being an occasional excursion from San
Francisco to the new town, then called Contra
Costa. Finally a company was induced to es-
tablish ferry communications, with at least one
round trip each day. The fare was then one dol-
lar each way, but was finally reduced to fifty
cents each way, with the chance of being detained
"by f°ggy weather five or six hours on a trip.
Gradually all these conditions changed, immigra-
tion became heavier, the location appealed to in-
coming settlers, and with their location in trie
town city conveniences came as a matter of
course and Mr. Adams lived to see his dream
fulfilled and a city of importance and prosperity
grow from the efforts of his and others first
residence in California. He continued through-
out his entire life, which lasted to December 14,
1888, to be associated with various business en-

terprises and was always to be counted upon in
the furtherance of any plan for the advancement
of the general welfare. He won a wide circle
of friends who held him in the highest apprecia-
tion for the many sterling traits of character
which were evidenced in many ways throughout
his long career as a citizen of this western com-
monwealth.

Mr. Adams was married May 3, 1 855, to
Miss Hannah J. Jayne, and born of this union
are three children, Julia P., Edson F. and
John C.

FREDERICK E. WHITNEY.

Inheriting the stanch qualities of a New Eng-
land ancestry, Frederick E. Whitney, one of Oak-
land's successful professional men, was born in
Farmington, Me.. November 2(1, 1850. His an-
cestors were English, and he is a direct descend-
ant of John Whitney, who settled in Watertown,
Mass., in 1632. He was the youngest son of
George W. and Violette (Haines) Whitney. Hi-
father was a man well known in his county for
his intelligence, integrity and public spirit. He
held many positions of trust in the township
government of Farmington and was elected
county clerk in 1848. After the expiration of
his term he engaged in mercantile business until
his death in 1866. He was secretary of the
county convention held in Strong. Me. (1855)1
which first, and at his suggestion, adopted the
party name Republican. Afterward lame- <i
Blaine recognized this as the birthplace of the
Republican party, and celebrated there its anni-
versary while as its standard bearer he W89 can-
didate for president.

The mother of the subject of this sketch mi
the daughter of Capt. Peter Haines a sterling
pioneer of Livermore, Me., whose mother \va»
Marv (Dudley) Haines, a direct descendant of
Thomas Dudley, at one time (about 1650) gov-
ernor of Massachusetts, which at that time in-
cluded the province, now the state, of Maine

Frederick E. Whitney attended the public

428

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

schools at Farmington and at the age of sixteen
years commenced teaching school in the rural
districts ; at seventeen he graduated at the State
Normal School of Maine at Farmington with
the highest rank, although the youngest member
of his class. In 1869 he graduated from the
Waterville Classical Institute and at once ma-
triculated at Bowdoin College, where he gradu-
ated with the highest honors in 1873 and was
made a member of the honor society Phi Beta
Kappa. He received his degree of B. A. and
three years later (1876) that of Master of Arts.

Immediately after graduating from Bowdoin
Mr. Whitney taught in the public schools of
Boston for four years, having acquired a life
certificate in that position, when he resigned and
came to Oakland, Cal., and began searching rec-
ords for the firm of Lawrie & Whitney (suc-
ceeded to now by Stocker & Holland), and at the
same time began the study of law under the
direction of his brother, Senator George E.
Whitney. A year later (1878) he accepted a
lucrative offer to go to Japan as instructor in
English literature and rhetoric in connection with
the Government University at Tokio. After
three years engaged in this manner he resigned,
and thereafter traveled around the world, visit-
ing many countries and places of interest, and
after passing through the Red Sea, Suez Canal
and Mediterranean and traversing Europe from
Naples to London, returned to America. He
at once passed successfully the examinations and
entered the senior class of the law department
of the University of Washington at St. Louis,
Mo., where he graduated, taking the degree of
LL.B. in 1882. He immediately returned to
make Oakland his permanent home. After his
admission to practice in all the state and federal
courts he became a law partner of his brother,
remaining with him until 1883, when he was ap-
pointed by the superior court judges, court com-
missioner of Alameda county, and for about fif-
teen years he discharged the duties of that office
in a very efficient manner. He now devotes all
his time to a general practice of law and has
enjoyed a large and lucrative practice. For a
term of four years he was attorney for the public
administrator of Alameda county, which with his

other practice has made him very familiar with
probate law and proceedings. He has taken a
lively interest in politics, although never a can-
didate for office. He served several terms as
chairman of the Republican city central commit-
tee and was also a member of the state central
committee. For several years he was connected
with the National Guard of California, rising
from the ranks as private to the position of
chief aide on the staff of General Turnbull,
N. G. C, with the rank of major. As a Mason
he has been a member of Oakland Lodge No.
188 for over twenty years, and as a Royal Arch
Mason he has been a life member of St. Paul's
Chapter, Boston, for over thirty years.

Mr. Whitney was married in Oakland, March
22, 1884, to Miss Edith A. Adams, who was
born in Farmington, Me., a daughter of Thomas
H. and Hannah (Corbett) Adams. His wife's
death occurred October 6, 1906. He has two
children, a son, Frederick Adams Whitney, now
in the University of California preparing for the
practice of law, and a daughter, Edna, who mar-
ried Robert I. Bentley, Jr., of San Francisco, on
April 22, 1908.

SAMUEL SOLOMON GREEN.

The gold excitement of California brought the
parents of Samuel Solomon Green across the
plains to the Pacific coast, and like many others
who foresaw the country's future greatness
through the means of commercial and agricul-
tural activity, the elder man became one of the
successful merchants of the city of San Fran-
cisco. Harris and Augusta (Yogel) Green were
the parents of eleven children, all but two of
whom were natives of California. His death
occurred in 1893, while his wife still survives
and makes her home at No. 1160 Golden Gate
avenue, in San Francisco.

Samuel Solomon Green was born in New York
City, November 21, 1853, and was but three
years old when brought across the plains of
California. He was reared in San Francisco

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

4.51

and educated in its public schools, and after
completing the course he sought employment in
a dry goods establishment of that city. Later
he engaged for himself in this pursuit in San
Francisco and continued so occttpied to the time
of his death, which occurred December 6, 1906.
He experienced the horrors of the earthquake
and fire of April 18, 1906, and lost both his stock
and establishment, but, nothing daunted, he
opened up in another location after the settle-
ment of the disaster and continued to conduct his
store until his death. He was a man of energy
and ability, stanch in his support of public in-
terests, and was looked upon as one of the enter-
prising and progressive citizens of San Fran-
cisco. Politically he was a Republican, but never
cared for personal recognition at the hands of
his party, although he liberally supported the
principles he endorsed. Fraternally he belonged
to the Foresters, being a member of Cremieux
Lodge, in which he acted as secretary for six-
teen years.

Mr. Green was married in San Francisco Oc-
tober 1, 1876, to Miss Jennie Blass, a daughter
of Meyer and Adeline (Seid) Blass, both natives
of Germany. They were also pioneers of Cali-
fornia, having emigrated to the state in 185 1
and located in San Francisco. Both are now
deceased, the mother dying in 1891, at the age of
seventy-five years, and the father in 1905, at the
age of eighty-three years.

WILLIAM REED.

The Reed family is well represented in Oak-
land and vicinity, first by the pioneer, William
Reed, and his wife, Hannah C. Reed, and also
by their children, grand and great grand-chil-
dren, who with marriages now number forty liv-
ing descendants, of whom we mention in partic-
ular Charles G. Reed, National Bank Examiner,
and George W. and Clarence M. Reed, senior
and junior members of the law firm of Reed,
Black & Reed.

The founder of the family in America was An-

drew Reed, of English descent and a retired
colonel of the English army, who was born in
County Antrim, Ireland, in 1693, and who mar-
ried Jean Murray, of Scotch-Irish descent. CoL
Andrew Reed, with his wife, eight sons and one
daughter, settled in Boothbay, Me., in 1743.
They with others founded the first church in
that town, and a nephew of Mrs. Reed, Rev. John
Murray, was its first pastor. Colonel Reed died
July 22, 1762, and his wife February 8, 1780.
Two sons died before the great struggle of the
colonies for independence ; of the six remaining,
five took an active part in the war, as did also
several grandsons. The eldest son, Andrew
(from whom the Reed family of Oakland is de-
scended), was a lieutenant-colonel, and his son
Robert, a boy of nineteen, was a fifcr. Paul, the
sixth son, was commander of a privateer which
captured several valuable prizes. David was a
captain, Joseph, first lieutenant and William a
private. A grandson, Andrew, Jr., was second
lieutenant. Robert, before mentioned, was after-
ward captain of a revenue cutter in connection
with the Custom House at Wiscasset, Me. Will-
iam, son of Robert, followed the sea for many
years. He was in command of a vessel captured
by the British in the war of 1812: \va> paroled
and allowed to continue on his voyage. One ver\
dark night a vessel under his command ran afoul
of the man-of-war Constitution (old Ironsides)
in Boston harbor, breaking a spar of the Consti-
tution.

In 1835 he established his home in Vassalboro,
Me., and in the meantime he had married Han-
nah P. Hutchings. Among the children born
of this marriage was a son to whom they cave
the name of William, his birth occurring Octo-
ber 11, 181 1, on Cape Xcwagcn Inland, now-
known as Westport. Lincoln countv. Me.

Early in life William Reed. Jr.. became ac-
quainted with the sea by accompanying his father
on his voyages and was commander of a vessel at
the age of twenty years. He conveyed the fir^t
cargo of cotton ever sent direct from a southern
port to Europe, making the trip from Galvr-
ton. Texas, to Havre de Grace in 1840. Pre-
viouslv all cotton had been sent to New York or
Boston and re-shipped. On the return voyage

432

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

he brought back a cargo of wines procured at
Bordeaux. During the thirty years or more of
his seafaring life Captain Reed entered every
port of any importance from Maine to Florida,
as well as Mobile and New Orleans, besides
making several voyages to Cuba and various
ports of the West Indies. On December 30, 1839,
he married Hannah Carleton Hall, who was born
in Vassalboro, Me., on August 16, 1818, the
daughter of John Goffe and Mercy (Taylor)
Hall.

Captain Reed's identification with California
dates back to the days of the early mining boom.
On the ship Rob Roy, he made the trip around
Cape Horn, arriving at San Francisco August 9,
1850, bringing with him as part of the cargo the
stern-wheel steamer Kennebec, which was put
together at North Beach and plied between Sac-
ramento and Marysville for a time, and of
which he was captain. In 1851 he returned to
Maine and engaged in farming until 1854, when
he again came to this state and for two years en-
gaged in mining at Angels Camp. His family
arrived in California November 14, 1856, and
settling in Oakland, he purchased a tract of
thirteen acres on Market street and engaged in
the business of raising fruit. From the sale of
this property, all of which is now a part of the
city, he realized a snug income. At the time of
his death he was the owner of considerable valu-
able property. Captain Reed and his wife are
both deceased, his death occurring April 19,
1905, when in his ninety-fourth year, and his
wife's December 31, 1906. Captain Reed was
ardent in his views on political questions, being
a member of the Union League, which was or-
ganized during the Civil war. He also took an
active interest in the public school system and
was at one time a member of the Board of Edu-
cation. In public as in private life his honor
never was questioned and his word was as good
as his bond. His probity, sterling character and
upright dealings with his fellowmen won for him
the loving friendship of all who knew him. He
acquired a competence during his business career
and the last years of his life were spent in quiet
contentment at his home at Sixteenth and Mar-
ket streets.

Six Jiildren blessed the marriage of Captain
and Mrs. Reed, as follows : Elizabeth M., born
in 1840 and now the widow of D. P. Barstow, of
whom a sketch will be found elsewhere in this
volume; Emily F. (deceased), born in 1842;
Charles Goffe, born in 1844, whose life history
also appears elsewhere ; George W., born in 1852,
whose sketch is given in this volume ; Nellie
Carleton, who was born in 1854 and is now the
wife of Thomas C. Mayon, of whose history a de-
tailed account will be found on another page;
and Annie Lincoln (deceased), born in 1857.

THOMAS WOLFE MORGAN.

Thomas Wolfe Morgan, lately one of the most
esteemed of Oakland's citizens, was born on the
3d of December, 1839, *n a house on Royal street,
New Orleans, where Andrew Jackson was enter-
tained by Rev. Dr. Wheat, his mother's uncle
and adopted father. He came by inheritance to
those fine principles and high traits of character
which distinguished his career, for both on pater-
nal and maternal sides his ancestry was among
the most aristocratic as well as the most intel-
lectual in America. His father was Judge
Thomas Nicholson Morgan, well known as the
youngest judge who ever sat on the bench, being
but twenty-four years old when elevated to this
high position. He was born in Louisiana in
1809, a son of Gen. J. Morgan and his wife, she
being a daughter of Judge John Nicholson. The
parents had located in the southern state from
Philadelphia, Pa., of which state they were na-
tives. Thomas N. Morgan was a gold medal
graduate of Yale in the class of '31, and ascended
the bench as associate justice of the city of New
Orleans when twenty-four, retaining the position
until his death in 1844, m Nashville, Tenn.
Judge Morgan took an active and leading part in
reform work in municipal matters as weir as
along humanitarian lines, being a member of St.
Paul's Episcopal Church and officiating for
many years as its warden. His wife was born

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

4:;:;

in Winchester, Va., May 17, 18 17, a daughter
of Thomas Wolfe, a native of that city, and his
wife, Mary Ann (Patten) Wolfe; the latter was
born in 1795 and died in 1825, while her mother,
Mary (Roberdeau) Patten, was born in Philadel-
phia in 1774, removed to Virginia and there, No-
vember 14, 1793, she married Thomas Patten,
who was born in Roxbury, Mass., the son of a
prosperous merchant. When nine years old Mr.
Morgan's mother was left an orphan and was
adopted by an aunt, who was the wife of Rev.
Dr. Wheat, of Chapel Hill, N. C. She married
Judge Morgan in 1837 and their only child was
Thomas W., of this review. Later she became
the wife of J. B. Harmon, who was afterward a
prominent attorney of San Francisco and Oak-
land; he removed to Ohio in 1852 and to Cali-
fornia in 1854.

Thomas Wolfe Morgan received his education
in Warren, Ohio, and New Orleans, while from
the age of fifteen to eighteen years he was under
the instruction of Dr. Wheat. He came to Cali-
fornia via the Panama route in 1857, arriving
in December of that year, after which he en-
gaged as an assistant to James Ferrill, United
States department surveyor, then in Monterey
county. He remained with him for four months,
and having acquired a knowledge of the science
in the University of North Carolina he continued
his studies. For a time he was undecided whether
to take up architecture or engineering, but in
1861 decided on the latter and was soon engaged
with Robert L. Harris in a survey of the first
horse railroad in San Francisco. He continued
with Mr. Harris for a period of four years, during
which he did instrumental work on Point San
Jose survey, and at Black Point Fort in 1863, and
the following two years was transit man on the
Harris work for the Central Pacific Railroad.
He next surveyed under George C. Potter, of
San Francisco, as leveler and computer, and later
as chief draughtsman to Wheaton for two years.
In 1868, with another who had taken the work-
under Mr. Harris, he formed a partnership, the
firm name being Morgan & Smith, and together
they began civil engineering and surveying. Tbey
had charge of the land party in the survey of the
Oakland water front, and in 1870 were chief en-

gineers in the survey of the first horse railroad m
Sacramento. In 1872 they surveyed the town of
Calistoga and in the following year began work
as deputy to T. J. Arnold, city engineer, and
made a map of the northern addition to Oakland.
In 1873 Mr. Morgan was put in charge as chief
deputy, and remained so until the death of Mr.
Arnold in 1878, when he was appointed city en-
gineer by the city council, holding the j*>Mti.;ii
until the new charter went into effect in April.
1889. He became his own successor by appoint-
ment of the board of public works. He made pre-
liminary surveys of Cliff house, the steam rail-
road, and also laid off the grounds on Sutro
Heights for the proprietor. He was a member
of the Technical Society of the Pacific G>a-t.
and also California Society of Civil Engineer-.
He was a man of great inventive ability and
many excellent ideas of his were prolific of splen-
did results in a mechanical way. He was a man
of diversified talents, home-loving to a degree,
an excellent violin player, a good conversationalist
and necessarily an entertaining companion. For
some time he was associated with Apollo Lodge,
I. O. O. F., the only secret society to which he
ever belonged. He was far-sighted and of keen
judgment, and made many investments in land
in East Oakland, Piedmont Heights, and in
Point Richmond, the last named town being laid
out by him. His own residence was built from
plans drawn up by his wife, to whom he deeded
the property. Mr. Morgan's death occurred Aug-
ust 3, 1904, in the midst of his career, and many
there were who mourned his loss and remember
well his name and the good he did to his fellow-
men while passing through this life.

Mr. Morgan was married in Santa Cruz De-
cember 25, 1865. to Miss Oiristina Agnes Ross,
who was born in Oxford, Ontario, October 16.
1847. a daughter of Daniel and Janet ( MacKcille )
Ross, both natives of Scotland, in which land they
were reared and married. They immigrated to
Canada in 1843. with five sons and one datigh'cr.
a son and two daughters being born in Canada.
They came to California in 185^. Of their thir-
teen children but three are living, namely : Dan-
iel, of Los Gatos ; Jennie, wife of W. A. Sanborn,
of Watsonville: and Mrs. T. W. Morgan. Tn

434

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Mr. and Mrs. Morgan the following children
were born : Ross, born in 1867, a graduate of
the University of California in the class of
1891, and now engaged as a civil hydraulic and
mining engineer; M. De Neale, born in 1868, a
graduate of the school of design of San Francisco
and an artist of marked ability ; Janet H., born in
1870 and died in 1877: Thomas W., Jr., born in
1875, a graduate of the high school and a
draughtsman ; Dana Roberdeau, a student of civil
engineering; James Wheat, bom in 1881, a sur-
veyor; and Jennie Christine, born in 1884, and a
teacher of music.

JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM SOHST.

The reminiscences of John F. W. Sohst carry
him back to the earliest days in the history of the
bay country, when the city of Oakland was a
town of only a few inhabitants, few houses, fewer
fences, and with nothing to presage the greatness
of the present metropolitan city. He was a young
man of twenty-two years when he came to Cali-
fornia, having been born in the Fatherland in
1837. He received his early education in Ger-
many in the public schools, after which, in 1854,
he came to America. He landed in New York
City, thence went to Sandusky, Ohio, and there
started in business making carriages and buggies
and wagons, remaining in different towns in Ohio
until 1859, when he set out for California. He
made the journey via the Isthmus of Panama and
in February arrived in San Francisco, where he
remained until August of the same year. It was
in that month that he first came to Oakland, a
description of his first impressions of this city
being realistically given by Mr. Sohst in an arti-
cle published in an Oakland paper in 1896. There
were two boats plying between San Francisco
and Oakland at that time — rival steamers — and
both left at the same time. Mr. Sohst and a
friend who were going to Oakland missed both
steamers and had to wait an hour. By this appar-
ent misfortune they were saved from being
in the wreck of the Contra Costa, upon which an

explosion took place, causing the loss of several
lives. This was in a spring month, and it was
not until August that Mr. Sohst finally came to
Oakland, having secured employment with the
Pioneer Carriage Works, at that time conducted
by Artemus Davison.

For a few months Mr. Sohst remained as man-
ager of this concern, when he purchased the fac-
tory and began the conduct of the enterprise for
himself. This factory was first located at Broad-
way and Water streets, was later moved to
Broadway between Seventh and Eighth streets,
and in 1873 was located on Eighth and Frank-
lin streets, where it has ever since been conduct-
ed. This is the largest enterprise of its kind in
the city, and has proven a profitable investment
for its owner. And not alone have the business
interests of Oakland claimed the attention of
Mr. Sohst, for he has taken an active and helpful
interest in everything pertaining to the develop-
ment of the city from the very first. He served
two terms in the city council, from 1874 to 1877,
and was an important factor in advancing move-
ments calculated to add to the city's welfare.
He it was who first proposed the Contra Costa
tunnel and fathered the proposition until its
completion, which was about four years ago. He
was at that time chairman of the tunnel commit-
tee and is still acting as its president. This com-
mittee was appointed by the Merchants' Ex-
change, of which Mr. Sohst was also president.

Mr. Sohst is also active in fraternal circles,
being a member of the Odd Fellows organiza-
tion and one of the original thirteen charter
members who on July 7, 1864, organized the
Oakland Lodge No. 118. He is likewise a mem-
ber of Oakland Lodge, No. 171, B. P. O. E.,
being the forty-sixth addition to that lodge, while
his son is the one thousand and first member of
the same lodge, showing its rapid growth since
its organization. Mr. Sohst is a charter mem-
ber of the Oakland Turnverein Society and a
director of the German Old People's Home of
Oakland, and a member of the German Club.
Although he has proven so good a citizen of his
adopted country, yet he maintains an honest loy-
alty for the Fatherland, where he first saw the
light of day.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

437

The marriage of Mr. Sohst, which took place
in San Francisco in 1863, united him with Miss
Margaret Buckingham, of Boston, Mass., who
came to California in 1859. They became the
parents of six children, of whom five are living,
as follows : Minnie, the wife of L. Emly, of
Oakland ; Nelli, a resident of Oakland ; William
W. H., manager of the Pioneer Carriage factory,
who is married and has two children ; Alice, the
wife of Harry Elfen, a prominent optician of
Oakland, and member of the firm of Davis &
Elfen ; and Carl G., of Oakland, who married
Miss Grandgene ; he is an Elk, . Mason, and a
member of the Native Sons of the Golden West ;
Adolph, deceased, was killed by an accident in
1890. Mr. Sohst has built up for himself since
his early location here a place among the repre-
sentative citizens, being deservedly held in high
esteem for the services he has rendered Oakland
in her early growth and development.

GEORGE W. REED.

One of the leading attorneys of Oakland is
George W. Reed, the senior member of the firm
of Reed, Black & Reed, well known throughout
this city and vicinity for their successful ac-
complishments along legal lines. Mr. Reed is
a native of the state of Maine, born in Vassal-
boro, June 14, 1852, and was a child of four
years when brought to this coast by his parents.
Up to the age of twelve years he attended the
public schools of Oakland and subsequently at-
tended the Brayton school and afterwards the
University of California, graduating from that
institution in 1872. In the meantime he had
made up his mind to follow the legal profession,
and immediately after his graduation he took up
the reading of law. At the end of one year he
received the appointment of deputy county clerk
under his brother, Charles G., a position which
he held four years. Thereafter he resumed his
law studies and in December of 1879 was a<^"
mitted to the bar. The following year he entered

the office of A. A. Moore in the capacity of law
clerk, remaining in this position until 1883,
when he was admitted to partnership with Mr.
Moore, under the firm name of Moore & Reed.
During the six years in which the partners were
amicably associated they built up an extensive
and profitable clientele, and had it not been for
Mr. Reed's election to the office of district at-
torney their relations would no doubt have con-
tinued indefinitely. Mr. Reed's election to office
occurred in November, 1888, and at the close of
his first term he was elected to succeed himself
in 1890. Later he formed the partnership of
Reed & Nusbaumer, and after eleven years
formed the partnership which now exists be-
tween himself, Mr. Black and his son, Clarence
M. Reed, the three working harmoniously to-
gether and in accord with the needs of their large
practice.

Mr. Reed has always taken a strong interest in
matters of public import, and as a Republican
lent his aid to the advancement of that party's
principles and now (1907- 1908) is serving as
chairman of the Republican county central com-
mittee. In 1900 he was sent as a delegate to
the national convention at Philadelphia, which
nominated William McKinley for president, and
in 1904 in the same capacity to the national con-
vention at Chicago, which nominated Theodore
Roosevelt. He again was a delegate to the na-
tional convention in Chicago in 1908 that Domi-
nated WTilliam H. Taft. He was a strong sup-
porter of Victor H. Metcalf when Metcalf ran
for congress, and was a member of his congres-
sional committee. For several years he was
chairman of the congressional committee of Jo-
seph R. Knowland, the present member of con-
gress from the third congressional district.

In civic matters Mr. Reed is also active, now
serving as trustee for the Cogswell Polytechnical
College of San Francisco, and is a director of the
California Institute for the Deaf and Blind at
Berkeley. Fraternally he belongs to the Masonic
organization, being a member of Sequoia Lodge,
F. & A. M. ; is a past Exalted Ruler of Oakland
Lodge. No. 171, B. P. O. E., and acted as chair-
man of the building committee which succeeded
in the face of manv obstacles in building the

438

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

Elks' Hall, one of the most popular clubrooms
in Oakland. He also belongs to University
Lodge, No. 144, I. O. O. F. Socially he is a
member of the State of Maine Association, in
which he takes a most active part, and is a mem-
ber of the Athenian Club. Mr. Reed is the
father of three children : Mabel Linden, wife of
Harry A. Lane of Los Angeles ; Clarence Mun-
roe, junior member of the firm of Reed, Black &
Reed ; and Russell Albert, who died aged twen-
ty-one years.

EDWIN MEESE.

One of the most prominent citizens of Oak-
land is Edwin Meese, a native son of California,
who has proven a factor in the development and
upbuilding of public interests. His parents, Her-
man and Katherine (Waldman) Meese, were
both natives of Germany and left the Fatherland
in 1849, when they crossed from New York City
to St. Louis, Mo., spent one year, and thence
crossed the plains to California. The elder Mr.
Meese located near Sacramento for the first year,
afterward engaged at contracting and building in
San Francisco, and finally became interested in
the sugar business. The father is still living in
Oakland, while the mother passed away in 1881.
Besides Edwin Meese, they were the parents of
the following children : Constant, of Oakland ;
Walter; Herman, who died at the age of thirty-
five years ; Emma, wife of J. C. H. Stut, of Oak-
land; Gustav, of Spokane, Wash., and Adolph,
of Oakland.

Edwin Meese was born in San Francisco,
March 28, 1857, the second child in the family
of his parents, and in the common schools of
that city he received his early education. He
took a four years' course at Fort Wayne, and
was next a student in Heald's Business College
of San Francisco, from which institution he was
graduated in 1876. His first business position
was as assistant secretary of the Bay Sugar Re-
finery, a company organized by his father and
the first of its kind on the Pacific coast. After

three years spent in Oakland he went to Sacra-
mento and followed a similar occupation for a
like period, when he sold out and returning to
Oakland established an insurance concern with
which he is still identified. He has been actively
identified with every movement of importance in
Oakland, belonging to its Board of Trade, serv-
ing as a director in its Chamber of Commerce,
and as a member of the Nile Club seeking social
advancement. After serving seven years as a
member of the City Council of Oakland he was
appointed city treasurer and tax collector, which
position he now holds. He was married in
Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1880 to Miss Cornelia
Van Wiltenburg, a daughter of John Van Wil-
tenburg, and they became the parents of the
following children : Emma, wife of Rev. M. H.
Liebe, of San Francisco ; Edwin, a student ; and
Alvina, who died at the age of eighteen months.

Also prominent in this family is Walter Meese,
who was born in San Francisco, November 7,
1858. He likewise received his education in the
public schools of San Francisco, and in Heald's
Business College took a commercial course, grad-
uating therefrom in 1875. He first took up
the trade of carpenter, which he followed for
three years, and then for two years engaged in
the sugar business with his father's company. He
was then sent to Central America to learn the
growing of sugar and spent one year at San Sal-
vador ; the business was then sold and on his re-
turn to his home he engaged in the wholesale
liquor business with a partner, the firm name
being Bach, Meese & Co. He acted as book-
keeper in the concern for about eight years,
when, in 1888, he purchased a wooden and willow
ware business which he has since changed to
hardware. For eighteen years he was located at
No. 1009 Washington street, but then removed
to his present location, No. 1014 Clay street,
where he is carrying on a large and profitable
business. Mr. Meese is associated with move-
ments calculated to advance the commercial in-
terests of Oakland, being a member of the Mer-
chants' Exchange, the Hardware Dealers' As-
sociation, both state and county (now serving as
treasurer of the Alameda County Association),
and is also a member of the Oakland Chamber

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

4: J! >

of Commerce. For a number of years he was a
director in the Merchants' Exchange and was
largely instrumental in its advancement and up-
building. Socially he is a member of the Ger-
man Club and for a number of years served as its
treasurer. In religion he belongs to the German
Lutheran Church of Oakland.

The marriage of Mr. Meese united him with
Miss Elizabeth Koenig, a daughter of Ferdinand
and Elizabeth (Hildebrand) Koenig; the cere-
mony was performed in Oakland in 1886. They
became the parents of the following children :
Anna, Alma, Dorothea, Walter, Arnold, Constant
and Elizabeth.

EUGENE SALTER VAN COURT.

A varied business career has been that of Eu-
gene Salter Van Court, many ups and downs in
the past that have jeopardized his business in-
terests, many obstacles that have been difficult to
surmount, and yet through it all he has come
triumphant — accumulating a competence and at
the same time building up for himself a place
among the representative citizens of Oakland,
where he has made his home throughout the
greater part of his life. He is a native son of
California, his birth having occurred on the old
Jeremiah Clark ranch, one mile south of May-
field, October 25, 1856; his father, John Warren
Van Court, was one of the early pioneers of Cali-
fornia, for further reference to whom see per-
sonal biography elsewhere in this volume.

Eugene S. Van Court received his education
in the public and high schools of San Francisco,
after which at a youthful age he engaged in
carrying papers for a livelihood. Later he en-
gaged with the Bradstreet Mercantile Agency for
two years, and then, in 1876, entered the employ
of McCain, Flood & McClure. a wholesale dry
goods firm, and remained in this connection until
they discontinued business in 1878. Then accept-
ing employment with the Deming- Palmer Mill-
ing Company, he remained in their employ for the

period of nine years as collector and assistant
bookkeeper, resigning in the fall to become finan-
cial agent for the racing stables of Senator
Hearst. He returned to California after one yiar
and became superintendent for the Reliance
Athletic Club, holding the position for five yean.
While in this connection he was one day pon-
dering upon what the future would bring to him,
when in a puddle of water in front of wh.it ifl now
the Forum he saw a muddy card. He stooped
down, pulled it out. brushed it off and read an
advertisement of a shorthand college which had
just opened. It seemed a way out of his difficul-
ties and he at once decided to take up stenog-
raphy and become a court reporter, and seven
months and three days later he reported his fir-t
case in the police court of Oakland. Fourteen
months later he went to work as a full-fledged
reporter and has since carried on this business,
for four years of this time working under Coro-
ner Baldwin, the remainder of the time to date,
under police judges, Fred Wood, Mortimer
Smith and George Samuels.

Besides the interests already mentioned, Mr.
Van Court has for some years associated him-
self with the La Zacualpa, the largest rubber
plantation in the world, in southwestern Mexi-
co, for which property, twelve thousand acre*,
has recently been offered $2,750,000. Mr. Van
Court has given much time and attention to the
project and to him much credit is due for its
success. He is also connected with various other
organizations, among them the Hoag Rapid
Press, the Shasta May Blossom and Shasta
Kennett Copper Mines, in the great copper <!i-
trict of Shasta, those two being the only two
not owned by the big close corporations of Eu-
rope and the United States. That Mr. Van
Court has been successful in his business career
is evidenced by existing conditions, and although
he has had much to contend with he has never
lost hope of ultimate success, has retained his na-
tive geniality of manner, and the genuine kindli-
ness of his disposition, which has won him a
large circle of friends wherever he is known.

Mr. Van Court formed domestic ties by his
marriage in Oakland. September 7. 1896, with
Miss Mary M. Graff, and their home is now

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

440

established at No. 1356 Harrison street, of this
city. Mr. Van Court is pre-eminently of a social
disposition and is identified with various frater-
nal organizations ; he is a Scottish Rite Mason,
having been made a Mason in Oakland Lodge
No. 188, F. & A. M., and passed through the
various bodies, and is also a member of Islam
Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S. He has held vari-
ous offices in the .Scottish Rite. He belongs to
Oakland Lodge No. 171, B. P. O. E., and Oak-
land Parlor No. 50, N. S. G. W. He is an ardent
supporter of the benefits to be derived from
athletics and has always taken a keen interest
in physical prowess, himself contending for and
receiving the title and right to wear the em-
blem of an Olympic champion on seven different
occasions in the Olympic Club games of the
Olympic Athletic Club of San Francisco. Cal.
Liberal, public spirited and enterprising, he is
eminently deserving of the high place he holds
among the citizens of Oakland.

JUDGE WILLIAM H. WASTE.

As one of the prominent citizens of Alameda
county, Judge William H. Waste, of Berkeley,
is assisting materially in the development of the
best interests of this section, filling the position
of judge of the Superior Court, to which he was
appointed by Governor Pardee on the 13th of
April, 1905. He is a native Californian, his
birth having occurred October 31, 1868, on a
farm in the vicinity of Chico, Butte county ; his
father. John Jackson Waste, a native of New
York, crossed the plains in 185 1, riding a fine,
thoroughbred Kentucky horse, and carrying his
rifle on the pommel of his saddle. He acted as
hunter and guide for an emigrant train which
was over three months in making the trip. Mr.
Waste first located in Sutter's Fort, and thence
removed to Princeton, Colusa county, where he
engaged in the raising of cattle and general
farming. Later he removed to Chico, Butte
County, where he engaged in farming, an occu-

pation which he continued up to the time of his
death, in 1882. His wife, formerly Mary C. Mc-
intosh, a native of Kentucky, died in 1868.

Judge Waste received his early education in
the public schools, after which he became a stu-
dent in the University of California and was
graduated therefrom in 1891, with the degree of
Ph. B. Deciding to take up the study of law,
he then entered Hastings Law School of San
Francisco, and graduated in 1894 with the de-
gree of LL.B. During the time he was engaged
in studying law he was also acting as reporter
on the San Francisco Examiner, and Chronicle
and the Oakland Tribune and Times. After being
admitted to the bar he commenced to practice in
Oakland and for several years continued in that
location. Politically he is a stanch advocate of
Republican principles and is active in the councils
of his party. In November, 1902, he was elected
to the state assembly from the Fifty-second dis-
trict, and was re-elected in 1904. On the 13th of
April, 1905, he received the appointment of his
present position of judge of the Superior Court.
At the same time he has taken a helpful inter-
est in the public affairs of the bay cities, as-
sisting in the organization of various enter-
prises, and has acted as attorney for several,
among them, the First National Bank of
Berkeley, the Homestead Loan Association of
Berkeley and the Berkeley Bank of Savings
and Trust Company. It was also through
his influence as a member of the assem-
bly that appropriations were secured for a large
state building at the University of California and
also an appropriation for an agricultural build-
ing, which, however, was never erected because
of lack of funds. Judge Waste also served as
president of the Young Men's Christian As-
sociation of Berkeley, which he helped to or-
ganize, and was an organizer and first president
of the Holmes Library Association of Berkeley
to which Mr. Carnegie contributed $40,000 for
the erection of a building. In the municipal
affairs of Berkeley, Judge Waste has also taken
a prominent interest.

In Berkeley, September 16, 1896. Judge Waste
was united in marriage with Miss Mary Ewing,
a daughter of Archibald and Rowena (Taylor)

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

443

Ewing, natives of Virginia, and born of this
union are two children, William E., and Eugen-
ia Mcintosh. Judge Waste is prominent in
fraternal circles, having been made a member of
the Masonic organization in Durant Lodge,
F. & A. M., of Berkeley, of which he is past
master, and belongs to Berkeley Chapter No. 92
R. A. M. ; Berkeley Commandery No. 42, K. T. ;
and Islam Temple, A. A. O. N. M. S. He is
also a member of Peralta Camp, W. O. W., of
Berkeley; and of Berkeley Parlor, N. S. G. W.
As a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church
he contributes liberally to all its charities, and
is prominent in the Epworth League. The posi-
tion held by Judge Waste in the esteem of the
people of Berkeley has been won by merit and
held by the maintenance of the principles upon
which his life work has been based. He is not
only a man of ability, but of principle as well,
and while he seeks his own personal advance-
ment, still gives his time and attention to the
duties that fall to the lot of a loyal citizen.

CPIARLES G. REED.

Practically the entire life of Charles G. Reed,
•of Oakland, has been passed in California, for he
came to the state with his parents when only
about twelve years old. His father was Capt.
William Reed, of whom mention is made else-
where in this work. Charles Goffe Reed was
born in Vassalboro, Me., December 24, 1844,
and in November, 1856, was brought to Oak-
land by his parents. He attended the old Car-
pentier school, being one of the first pupils en-
rolled there, and finally he entered the Oakland
College School, taking up a business course. His
first independent work was in a wholesale cloth-
ing business in San Francisco, with which he re-
mained connected for four years, when he came
to Oakland and engaged in the hardware busi-
ness for about two years, being located on the
•corner of Twelfth and Broadway. He then en-
25

tered the office of the county clerk as deputy
under J. V. B. Goodrich, and after four years in
this service was elected to the office of countv
clerk in 1875. Re-elected in 1877, he served two
terms, and then became deputy under C. E.
Palmer, county treasurer, and held the position
for four years. Entering the Union National
Bank at that time, he was advanced to the posi-
tion of paying teller and later was made exchange
teller, which duty he discharged until receiving
the appointment of national bank examiner for
the Northern District of California, in October,
1907.

In Oakland, January 8, 1868, Mr. Reed was
united in marriage with Miss Flora A. Moore,
daughter of Gorham H. and Mary A. (Jenkins 1
Moore, and they became the parents of four chil-
dren, namely: Olive, wife of S. W. Cushman,
of Oakland ; Elmer, engaged in a hardware busi-
ness in Nome. Alaska ; Aimce, wife of Harwood
D. Swales, of East Oakland: and Eva. who be-
came the wife of H. D. Dan forth and died June
28, 1904, at the age of twenty-nine years. Mr.
Reed has always taken a keen interest in move-
ments looking toward the betterment of general
conditions and has been found ready to lend his
aid for such promotion. Fie was a member of
the old Oakland Guard as private in 1862 ami
was later promoted to first lieutenant, and was
also a member of the Oakland light cavalry. He
was a member of the Board of Education of Oak-
land from 1893 t0 l&97' during which time he
acted as chairman of the finance committee and
high school committee. Fraternally he is asso-
ciated with the Independent Order of Odd Fol-
lows, in which he is past grand, and also belongs
to the Ancient Order of United Workmen, in
which he has passed all the chairs, represented
his lodge in the grand lodge at various sessions
and was grand trustee. He also belongs to the
Fraternal Brotherhood. He is a member of the
First Baptist Church, in which he officiated as
trustee. He is a broad-minded, liberal and public
spirited citizen, and by his strict integrity f>i
character, business ability and genial disposition
has justly won the position he holds in Oakland
and its vicinity.

444

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

JOHN C. STOUT, M. D.

For a number of years Dr. Stout has been a
resident of Oakland and during that time has
built up and conducted an extensive practice in
medicine and surgery, as well as establishing
for himself a place in the citizenship of this sec-
tion of California. He is a native of Illinois, his
birth having occurred in Carrollton, Greene
county, January 27, 1846; his father, Jacob M.
Stout, was born and reared in Oxford, Ohio,
where he took up the study of medicine. He be-
came an early settler of Greene county, 111., and
there followed the practice of his profession in
conjunction with agricultural interests. Both
himself and wife, the latter in maidenhood Julia
A. Henderson, also a native of Ohio, are now de-
ceased.

John C. Stout passed his childhood on the
paternal farm, receiving a primary education
through an attendance of the public school in the
vicinity of his home. August 7, 1862, he enlisted
in Company I, Ninety-first Regiment, Illinois
Infantry, and his regiment being assigned to Gen-
eral Buell's command, they went at once to Ken-
tucky. There Mr. Stout was taken prisoner De-
cember 29, 1862, was paroled and sent to St.
Louis, Mo., and exchanged June 11, 1863. He
rejoined the army and went to Vicksburg, where
the regiment became a portion of the Third Bri-
gade, Second Division of the Thirteenth Army
Corps. Incapacitated because of exposure, he
was granted a furlough and before its expiration
he was honorably discharged at Springfield, 111.,
February 19, 1864. Subsequently he prepared
for and entered Illinois College at Jacksonville,
where he pursued his studies for one year.

Deciding then to take up the profession so
long followed by his father, he became a student
in the American Medical College at St. Louis,
Mo. In 1867 he engaged in the drug business
with his father at Whitehall, after he completed
his education in Shurtleff College, in Upper Al-
ton, 111. He did not graduate until 1878, in the
meantime practicing for a, time with his father
and also spending two years in California. Three
years after his graduation he again came to Cali-
fornia, and locating in San Jose made that city

his home for fourteen years, during which time
he rose to a prominent position among the citizens
of that place. He not only built up a large and lu-
crative practice in medicine in that city, but as a
stanch Republican politically aided materially
in the advancement of these interests, exercising
a marked influence in all public matters. This
practice he gave up to locate in Los Angeles
county, where he purchased one hundred acres
of deciduous fruit, forty acres of olives and twen-
ty acres of oranges and lemons, sacrificing it all,
however, because of lack of water. Two years
later (1897) the doctor came to Oakland, and
here for more than ten years he has been promi-
nent as a specialist in nervous and chronic dis-
eases, and also as a very successful surgeon. He
has won the confidence of the people with whom
he has been associated, their appreciation being a
tribute to his thoroughness and perfect mastery
of his profession.

In 1876 Dr. Stout married Miss Laura Ger-
trude Smith, a native of Alton, 111., and a daugh-
ter of Hon. George Smith, ex-state senator and
one of the founders of Shurtleff College. Born
of this union are three children, namely : Pearl
H., at home; Arthur G., engaged in business in
San Francisco ; and Olive G. The doctor is as-
sociated with various medical organizations, hav-
ing been a member and delegate of the National
Eclectic Medical Society, past president of the
Illinois State Medical Society and past president
of the California Eclectic State Medical Society,
having officiated for two terms in the latter ; is
also past president of the Santa Clara Medical
Society. While a resident of San Jose he was a
member and surgeon for the John A. Dix Post,
G. A. R., filling this same position in the Admiral
D. D. Porter Post of Oakland at the present writ-
ing, while he is past medical director of the De-
partment of California of this organization, and
past commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy
Republican League of California, which numbers
seven thousand members. Although so promi-
nent in politics Dr. Stout has never cared for
personal recognition along these lines and has
repeatedly refused solicitations to become a can-
didate for official position ; at one time, however,
in Neosho, Kans., he acted as sheriff of the

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

445

county, while he has served frequently as dele-
gate to state and county conventions. He has al-
ways favored clean politics and has given his in-
fluence consistently in this direction. With his
family he is a member of the Twenty-third Ave-
nue Baptist church, and has always taken an
active part in church work. Fraternally he is an
Odd Fellow, being a member of Observatory
Lodge, No. 23, of San Jose, in which he has
passed all the chairs, has also passed all the chairs
in Golden Rule Encampment of Oakland, is past
surgeon and major of Canton, No. 11, Patriarchs
Militant, is a member and past chancellor com-
mander of Amazon Lodge, No. 181, of Oakland,
and is captain of Uniformed Rank, Knights of
Pythias, No. 66, also of this city.

MARTIN W. KALES.

Martin W. Kales, who has been connected with
California more or less during the past forty
years, was born in Coventry, Chenango county,
N. Y., June 5, 1845, a son of William and Han-
nah (Sheldon) Kales, the father a native of
Ireland and the mother of New York. Will-
iam Kales, who was born July 4, 1806, a
son of Francis Arthur Kales, came with
his parents to Albany, N. Y., when four years
old. There he grew to young manhood and re-
ceived an excellent education, following teach-
ing for some years; finally he took up farming
pursuits, which occupied his attention throughout
the remainder of his life, which lasted to the
ripe age of eighty-two years. He became a leader
in the Republican party of his locality and was
sent to the state legislature the year that John
C. Fremont was nominated for the presidency,
which cause he championed loyally. He married
in New York and had eight children, four of
whom now survive, Martin W. being the only one
on the Pacific coast.

In the common and high schools of his native
place Martin W. Kales received his education, be-
fore the close of his studies enlisting in March,

1862, in Company D, Eighth Regiment New
York Cavalry, under command of Col. Benjamin
F. Davis, for service in the Civil war. His regi-
ment was assigned to the Army of the l'uto
mac and there he served faithfully until Decern
ber 4, 1863, when he was honorably discharged,
having participated in the battles of that anm
and lastly in the battle of Gettysburg. Returning
to his home in New York he remained there until
1865, m which year he came west and in Austin.
Nev., was employed in the First National Bank
of Nevada. He retained his connection with
this institution for four years, when he engaged
in mining in that state for four or five years. In
the fall of 1876 he went to Arizona and at Pres-
cott established the Bank of Arizona, that being
the first financial institution in the territory, and
served as its cashier for two years. He then be-
came president of the Phoenix, a private bank
conducted under the name of Kales & Lewis, and
Mr. Lewis became president of the Bank of Ari-
zona. In 1887 Mr. Kales established the National
Bank of Arizona at Phoenix and upon its or-
ganization became president and held the position
until 1896, when he sold out his interests and re-
tired from the active management of the various
banks with which he had been associated ; he still
retains his legal residence in Phoenix.

In 1880 Mr. Kales married Miss Rose Whis-
ler, of San Francisco, and born of this union are
the following children: Arthur F, a graduate
of the State Universitv of California and now
engaged in the zinc mines at Carthage, Mo. ;
Ruth and Rose, at home; Franklin A., a student
in the State Universitv; and Spencer M., a gradu-
ate of the high school and now a student in the
State University. Tn June, 1887. Mr. Kales re-
moved his family to Oakland because of climatic
conditions and educational advantages, and hen-
purchased the property at No. 176 Lake street
and remodeled and refurnished the residence
which is now their home. Mr. Kales is a stanch
Republican in his political convictions, baring
cast his first ballot for IT. S. Grant. He is prom-
inent sociallv. being a charter member of the
Claremont Country Gub and member of Lincoln
Post No. t. G. A. R.. of San Fnmcisco. He i^
prominent in the Masonic organization, havl-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

446

been a Thirty-third degree Mason since the fall
of 1890; is past grand master of Arizona, past
grand high priest of Arizona, is a member of
Arizona Lodge No. 2, F. & A. M., Arizona Chap-
ter No. I, R. A. M., and is a member of Oakland
Commandery No. 11. K. T., and Islam Temple,
A. A. O. N. M. S., of San Francisco.

HORACE DANE FERSON.

The various enterprises with which Horace
Dane Ferson was identified served not only to
bring him a personal fortune, but as well to de-
velop and upbuild the resources of the state of
California. Inheriting the sturdy qualities of New
England ancestry, he was born in Hillsboro coun-
ty, N. H., June 30, 1826, a son of Moses B. and
Sally (Colby) Ferson, both descendants of Scot-
tish families who located in America and served
in the Revolutionary war. His father was a car-
penter, but Horace Dane Ferson was reared on
a farm, receiving a limited education in the com-
mon schools. His parents being in straightened
circumstances he was put out to work for his
board and clothes and from that time on he was
dependent upon his own resources. He soon
found employment in a cotton mill at Lowell,
Mass., and remained there for some time, when
he returned to New Hampshire and drove a mar-
ket wagon. From this he gradually drifted into
the buying and selling of live stock and this
proved a rather profitable employment. He gave
it up, however, to come to California, in 1858,
with the idea of making his fortune in the mines
of the state. While this occupation contributed to
his success, yet he was much more interested in
other lines of work which meant more for the
development of the Pacific coast resources. He
made the journey west via the Isthmus of Pan-
ama, thence up the coast to San Francisco, and
from that city to Butte county. He arrived De-
cember 1 and began working in the mines, con-
tinued for himself about a year and a half and
then worked for others for a time. Finally he

established a butcher business and conducted this
successfully until 1862, when with his accumu-
lated means he began the raising of stock and
mining for himself. He was located at Powell-
ton in this line of work until 1870, when in the
vicinity of Chico, Butte county, he bought two
hundred and forty acres of land and added farm-
ing to his labors. He continued to meet with
success in his ventures and soon owned a tract of
a thousand acres, part of which was developed
and a part devoted to timber. With this latter in-
terest he combined the conduct of a large sawmill
at Chico, operating the same for three years. He
sold out his mining interests in 1892, also his
stock, confining his energies to general farming
until 1905, when he also disposed of these in-
terests, and moving to Oakland, lived retired
from the active cares of life until his death,
March 17, 1907. He was identified with many
projects which had for their end the upbuild-
ing of the best interests of Butte county, his
name figuring prominently in various enterprises.
He was a man of shrewd business judgment,
combined with a quickness of decision without
which no man succeeds. He started with noth-
ing to be classed as assets, and yet steadily
climbed the ladder to a position of influence. The
first success he achieved in California was in 1865,
when he went to Mendocino county, and pur-
chasing a drove of one hundred steers drove
them over a trail in the mountains, through val-
leys and the snow region until at last he reached
again the "land of sunshine and flowers." The
success of this venture gave him means to con-
tinue on a broader scale and thus came to him
the opportunities of life which he at once util-
ized.

In New Hampshire December 25, 1849, Mr.
Ferson was united in marriage with Miss Lucy
Bennett, a daughter of Moses and Betsey (Ben-
nett) Codman, descendants of Scotch and Eng-
lish ancestry. She was born in Grafton, N. H.,
July 14, 1831, and came to California after her
husband had secured a foothold financially. Mr.
Ferson never cared for official recognition, al-
though he always gave his efforts toward the
advancement of Republican principles. With
his wife he was affiliated with the Presbyterian

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

449

Church and gave liberally toward its support.
Mr. and Mrs. Ferson had one daughter, Laura
Jane, now the wife of Rolla Fuller, of Red Bluff,
Tehama county, Cal. Mr. Ferson was a man of
sterling traits of character, inheriting a strength
of purpose and steadfastness which brought him
financial success, and personally bearing about
with him a friendly and helpful cordiality, a
hearty sympathy, which won for him a place
high in the esteem of his fellow citizens.

JOSEPH NICHOLAS GHIR ARDELLI .

The old names of California still recall the pio-
neer spirit which gave to the western statehood
its first impetus toward the high place it now
holds among its sister states, and among these
that of Ghirardelli is prominent in the bay cities.
Domingo Ghirardelli was the pioneer, and in
San Francisco he conducted a successful business
for many years. His son, Joseph Nicholas Ghir-
ardelli, was born in San Francisco February 7,
1852 ; the early years of his boyhood were passed
in his native city, but at a comparatively early
age he was sent with two brothers, to Europe.
One of his brothers died while studying in Eu-
rope. Joseph N. studied for some time in Italy,
after which he returned to California and be-
came a student in Santa Clara College, which he
attended up to within six months of his gradua-
tion. At the age of twenty years he entered the
store established by his father in Oakland, and
there assisted in the management and was later
taken into the firm. As the business increased he
as elected to the position of vice-president, which
office he held at the time of his death. Their
business was the manufacture of chocolate, and
was one of the successful industries of Oakland
and San Francisco. At one time Mr. Ghirardelli
was a member of the Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, and at the time of his demise was an
Elk of many years standing and a very active
member of that organization, holding member-
ship in the Oakland lodge. In young manhood

he had voted the Democratic ticket, but in later
years inclined to independence in political mat-
ters. Mr. Ghirardelli passed away in his home
in Oakland May 11, 1906, heart failure superin-
duced by the shock received at the time of the
great earthquake being the cause of his demise.
He was sincerely mourned by a large circle of
friends, won in both business and social life, for
he was of a genial, kindly temperament, fond of
sports, especially of hunting, taking an active,
normal interest in all that was going on around
him. He was a public spirited citizen and liberal
to a degree.

In Oakland, in 1885, Mr. Ghirardelli was united
in marriage with Miss Ellen Frances Barstos-. . I
daughter of David Pierce and Elizabeth (Reed)
Barstow, whose personal history is given else-
where in this volume. They became the parents
of two children, Joseph N., Jr., engaged in the
real estate business in Oakland, and Carmen, a
student. The old family home of the Ghirardcllis
was at the corner of Fifth and Brush *t rret s
Oakland, and after Mr. Ghirardelli's marriage he
built a residence on the corner of Market and
Nineteenth streets, where he made his home until
his death. Since that event the widow has re-
moved to Piedmont, where she owns a beauti-
ful home.

GEORGE CHASE.

The first white man to settle in that part of
Alameda county where th<< city of Oakland now
stands was Moses Giase, a seaman from early
manhood, who as captain of a vessel had touched
at every important port in Europe. He passed
several years of his life in marine pursuits part
of the time as proprietor of a pump and block
factory, fitting the equipments of his company to
ships. He came to California in 1849. leaving
Boston January 24 on the ship Capitol, round-
ing Cape Horn, and arriving in San Francisco
June 14. He traced the footsteps of others who
went to the northern mines, but being accus-
tomed to the salt air of the sea. was stricken with

450

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

mountain fever and compelled to abandon gold
hunting. He returned to the bay country, where
he bought a boat, and made his camp on Gib-
bons' point, which now is the foot of the Oakland
mole. Then it was forested with oaks, and the
country which now is a city was part of the
same forest. While established at Gibbons'
point Mr. Chase explored the whole bay region,
and discovering the creek which separates Oak-
land from Alameda today, changed his camp to
the estuary shore. Broadway now ends at the
very point where he located. Subsequently he
removed across the creek to the east side, and
while tenting there he and the three Patten
brothers leased land that afterwards was the site
of Clinton. They planted it with potatoes,
which the year previously had brought $i per
pound ; but because of the demand, many per-
sons began raising the vegetable for market,
and prices consequently fell. About two years
later, Mr. Chase and the Pattens gave up their
lease to a syndicate, which, having bought them
out, began laying out the land and founded
Clinton, now a portion of East Oakland. Mr.
Chase spent the winter months in hunting ducks
for the markets, and in this occupation made as
much as $1,000 in one month. For guns and
supplies he went east and shipped his purchases
across the Isthmus. He owned a sloop and
cruised over the bay as the game migrated. Mr.
Chase lived retired for the last ten years of his
life, and died February 17, 1891, at the age of
eighty-four years and six months. His wife,
Mary Emily (Stickney) Chase, had passed
away in the east in 184 1, leaving an only child,
George.

George Chase was born in Newburyport,
Mass., April 17, T841, and losing his mother
when but three weeks old, was reared by his
father's sister, wife of Captain Allen, with whom
he lived until he reached his majority. In 1854,
Captain Allen, his wife and daughter and George
Chase came to California, Mr. Chase's father
having made a trip to the east and arranged for
them to leave for the west, he returning by the
Isthmus route, and they following later in the
clipper ship Fly Away, which came around via
Cape Horn. Mrs. Allen lived in California until

1891, when her death occurred. George, who
had been attending the public schools in his na-
tive place, resumed his education in the Oak-
land College for a time. One of his first ventures
in earning his own livelihood was acting as toll
collector at the old Twelfth street bridge, which
he gave up to engage with his father and uncle
in hauling freight across San Francisco bay. In
i860 George Chase began an apprenticeship to
learn the trades of carriage and house painting,
following the first named vocation for three years
and the latter for twenty. An injury sustained
in his work compelled him to retire from this oc-
cupation, and he accepted a position as copyist
under P. R. Borein, the county recorder, who
was an intimate friend of Mr. Chase's. A few
years later Mr. Chase was appointed to the office
of deputy county treasurer under James A. Web-
ster and subsequently under Socrates Huff, hold-
ing the appointment for more than ten years. In
November, 1892, he was elected to the office of
county treasurer and successfully discharged the
incumbent duties for two years. Mr. Chase has
been interested in various business undertakings
during the past years, one of which was a min-
ing venture in Montana in company with other
men. At the present writing he is engaged prin-
cipally in the real estate business.

In Oakland, December 25, 1869, Mr. Chase
formed domestic ties through his marriage with
Miss Mandana E. Boyton, a native of Maine,
and daughter of James and Elizabeth (Monroe)
Boyton. They became the parents of the fol-
lowing children : Mary Emily, the wife of J. L.
Williams of East Oakland; George Moses and
Gertrude, twins, the latter now deceased ; and
Albert B., engaged in the real-estate business
in San Francisco. Mr. Chase was one of the
original members of the Oakland Guards and
served for many years. He has had an active
part in musical circles of the city, being a mem-
ber of a band and a singer in choir and quartette.
He is a member of several fraternal organiza-
tions, among these the Odd Fellows, being the
first to be initiated into Orion Lodge No. 189 in
East Oakland. In this he has passed all the
chairs, served as representative to the Grand
Lodge, and been one of the most active workers.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL REO >RD.

43]

He is treasurer of the Orion Odd Fellows Hall
Association, and for twenty-eight years acted as
recorder in the Ancient Order of United Work-
men, of which he now is financier. Likewise,
he is identified with Oakland Camp No. 94,
Woodmen of the World. Mrs. Chase is a mem-
ber of Brooklyn Rebekah Lodge No. 12, and was
installed as the first lady noble grand in Cali-
fornia on January 7, 1878. She and her hus-
band are now the only charter members of the
lodge.

DANIEL WEBSTER PRATT.

Many of Oakland's early citizens were self-
made men, whose success came to them entirely
through their own efforts, and of these a promi-
nent place belongs to Daniel Webster Pratt,
whose death occurred August 29, 1900. Mr.
Pratt came of an old New York family, his own
birth occurring in that state September 9, 1835 ;
until he was thirteen years old he remained on
the paternal farm, when he was taken by his
mother to New Berlin, same state. Mr. Pratt
received but scant schooling, and at the age of
thirteen and a half years became apprenticed to
learn the trade of carriage painting. Upon the
completion of his apprenticeship he went to
Utica, N. Y., and there followed his trade, and
there married Merinda Stilwell, also a native of
New York. They had one child born in New
York, where it died, and two children born in
California, one son dying in infancy, and the
daughter, Martella A., becoming the wife of Dow
Golden, of Dimond. They were persuaded to
come to California by Mr. Pratt's sister and her
husband, who had preceded them to the Pacific
coast, and this they were more inclined to do be-
cause of the failing health of Mrs. Pratt. They
made the journey via the Isthmus of Panama,
and upon his' arrival Mr. Pratt engaged in busi-
ness for himself in San Francisco. After some
years the family removed to Oakland and here
Mr. Pratt followed his business, establishing his
home on Eleventh street, beside the old Pardee

home. Mrs. Pratt's death occurred in 1875, when
her daughter was about ten years old. Mr. Pratt
finally gave up independent work in Oakland and
soon found employment with a firm manufactur-
ing marble slabs from a patent process, and this
enterprise he managed for some time. About this
time Mr. Pratt received an appointment to the
United States mint in San Francisco and held
this position for some years.

In January, 1876, Mr. Pratt was united in mar-
riage with Mary B. Tompkins; she was born in
Cohoes, N. Y., a daughter of Clark and Eliza A.
(Cook) Tompkins, both natives of Rhode Island.
Her father was a mechanic and had been ci I
in Troy for some years, hut because of impaired
health he had come to California, his daughter
following him in 1874. Soon after his marriage
Mr. Pratt accepted a position as deputy entity
clerk, under Charles G. Reed, continuing with
him during his term of office After its expira-
tion he went to Arizona on a mining and pros-
pecting tour, but was not successful; he was also
located at Halfmoon Bay, San Mateo county, in
the cattle business, and later set out a tract of
twenty acres in grapes, in the Fresno colony,
which property is still owned by his mdow.
Upon returning to Oakland Mr. Pratt enpa^cd in
the real estate business in partnership with
Charles E. Lloyd, with whom he remained asso-
ciated for several years. They afterwards dis-
solved partnership and Mr. Pratt continued the
business until incapacitated by a stroke of paral-
ysis, which left him an invalid for two years,
when his death occurred. In every possible re-
spect Mr. Pratt had proven his worth as a citi-
zen, taking a keen interest in all upbuilding
movements and ever readv to lend substantial aid.
He was an ardent Republican politically, and
worked for the party's interests. He was a pa-
triot and at the time of the country's need he
sought to give his services, but was rejected be-
cause of ill health ; he gave his services, however,
in caring for those who were wounded and sent
back from the front during the first years of the
war. He was a member of the First Methodist
Episcopal church, member of the board of trus-
tees, and teacher in the Sund.iv-schonl. thor-
oughly conscientious and ever ready to lend a

452

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

helping hand to those less fortunate than himself.
Fraternally he belonged to the Masonic organiza-
tion, the Ancient Order of United Workmen,
and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, hav-
ing been made a member of the first organization
in New York, and here affiliated with Live Oak
lodge, and was later transferred to the Oakland
lodge.

NORMAN A. HARRIS.

The connection of Norman A. Harris with the
mining interests of the western states has resulted
in financial returns for himself, as well as a de-
velopment along this line of no small importance.
Descended .from old New England stock, Mr.
Harris was born in Chesterfield, Cheshire county,
N. H., September 9, 1827; his parents were John
and Luna (Fletcher) Harris, natives of the same
state and life-long residents. In the common
schools of New Hampshire he received his educa-
tion, after which he engaged in various pursuits
until 1850. In this year he came to California,
making the journey by way of the Isthmus of
Panama and spending twenty-three days en
route. After arriving in San Francisco he re-
mained there for a short time, then went to Sac-
ramento, and thence to the mines of Shasta and
Butte counties. This occupation, which proved
so disastrous to so many adventurous sons of
the east, continued to be the chief interest of Mr.
Harris and has brought him large returns as a
reward for the strenuous effort he has made
toward the development of claims. In 1859 he
became associated with George C. Perkins, H.
B. Lathrop, D. D. Harris, James Nelson and O.
P. Powers, in the organization of the Spring Val-
ley Hydraulic Claims, a company which continued
to operate for about twenty-five years, Mr. Har-
ris having been superintendent all this time. In
1873 it was consolidated with the Cherokee Com-
pany, which was established in 1855 and was
known as the Spring Valley Canal & Mining
Company, of which Mr. Harris was also super-
intendent for a number of years. The former

company had gone to great expense in the oper-
ation of their claims, putting in a water way of
about forty miles at a cost of $40,000, building
reservoirs, etc. After the consolidation others
were interested in the concern, which was finally
sold to a New York company for $1,000,000. At
one time the)'' were offered a much larger sum
for the mines, but through an act of the state
legislature the difficulties to be encountered in
hydraulic mining became much greater and natur-
ally depreciated the property to some extent.
During Mr. Harris' connection with the proper-
ty the company took out $2,000,000, while Mr.
Harris himself made the largest bar ever cast at
that time, containing $73,000 worth of ore. In
1883 he took charge of the Big Bend Tunnel for
Dr. Pierce, made the survey and ran the tunnel
over two miles to turn the course of the North
Fork of Feather river, but this did not make their
mining a success and this property is now (1908)
owned by the Western Power Company.

At one time a number of diamonds were found
in the Cherokee mines, Mr. Harris now having
two in his possession, one cut and one in its
natural state. They are as fine specimens as have
been found in America. During 1907 and 1908
much progress has been made in the development
of these mines, known to contain precious stones,
and they have been visited by experts from the
diamond centers of the world. Although he is
not now identified with the Spring Valley Com-
pany, Mr. Harris is still connected with min-
ing interests, having a quartz mine in Mexico as
well as mines in both Plumas and Butte counties,
all of which he is operating individually. Prac-
tically since 1850 Mr. Harris has given his un-
divided attention to mining interests and is con-
sidered an authority on all questions of min-
ing, and his opinion is respected by all who know
him.

Mr. Harris was married in Cambridge, Mass.,
to Miss Addie L. Taft, the descendant of May-
flower ancestry, her parents being Owen and Ad-
aline (Udall) Taft, both natives of Vermont.
Mrs. Harris has among her treasured possessions
some continental money paid her great-grandfa-
ther for his services in the Revolutionary war,

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECuRD.

and also two badges worn by her father in the
Henry Clay and W. H. H. Harrison campaigns.

Personally Mr. Harris is a man of many parts,
inheriting the strong integrity, honor and hon-
esty which have characterized his career; pos-
sessing unusual business ability which has
brought him financial success ; and in character
and disposition winning friends wherever he is
known by his demonstrated geniality, hospitality
and unfailing courtesy. As a citizen he occupies
a high position in this section of the state and
can always be depended upon to further any
movement brought forward for the advancement
of the general welfare.

JAMES B. MERRITT.

The manufacturing interests of the bay
country have had in James B. Merritt an able
advocate for many years, for he came to Cali-
fornia in 1 87 1, and locating in Alameda county,
six miles southeast of Oakland, established a
plant for the manufacture of blasting fuse, which
with many alterations and improvements is in
operation at the present writing. Mr. Merritt
came of a literary family, both parents, James B.
and Sarah Goodwin (Humphrey) Merritt, being
school teachers. They were both natives of Con-
necticut, whence after their marriage they went
south to Alabama and there engaged in their
chosen work. There their son was born Decem-
ber 31, 1839, in Springhill, Marengo county;
later the mother returned to Connecticut, where
she passed the remainder of her life, the father
having passed away the day before his son was
born.

James B. Merritt received his education in the
schools of New England, after completing the
course in the common schools entering Wilbra-
ham Academy and there preparing for Amherst
College, where he later became a student. He
was but eighteen years old when he decided to be-
come a pioneer of the then remote west — Illinois,
— and there began teaching school in Adams
countv. He remained a resident of Illinois until

1864, when he returned to Simsbury, Conn., and
there during the years 1865 and 1866 operated
a grist and saw mill. He built up a large busi-
ness in the two years, but disposed of this en-
terprise and returning to Illinois purchased a
farm of one hundred and sixty acres, carry-
ing it on until 187 1 , in which year he cair.c to
California. The plant he established here
for the manufacture of fuse for bjasting pur
poses and it proved so profitable that Mr. Mer-
ritt found it necessary to enlarge and improve
his plant from time to time. He held his con-
nection with this enterprise during its variou>
changes for a period of thirty years, the com-
pany being known a part of the time as the Toy-
Bickford Company. Upon the death of Mr.
Toy in 1887 it was changed to the Ensign- Bick-
ford Company. There was a change in the
affairs in 1881, but Mr. Merritt remained in
active management up to 1901, in which year hi*
son, Albert H. Merritt, succeeded to the pod
tion, he being one of the largest stockholders in
the concern. The company is now known as the
Coast Supply & Manufacturing Companv. thil
being but a branch of a company established »"
England, where they still have a factory ; in i v
the first branch in America was organized in
Connecticut, after which the California branch
came into existence. Mr. Merritt is still a direct-
or in the companv, although practically retired
from business life at the present writing.

Mr. Merritt formed domestic ties bv his mar-
riage. May 26, 1863, with Miss Catharine 1\
Cormenv, a native of Pennsylvania and daugh-
ter of George Cormenv. and born of this union
are the following children: Sarah T., wife of
Edward C. Robinson, a prominent attorney of
Oakland: Albert H. : Mary Williston. wife of
Giarles H. Cowell. connected with the gas com-
panv of Oakland: Gertrude E.. at homo; and
Augusta A., wife of Thomas \V. Norn's, of Oak-
land. They are all members of the First
byterian Church of Oakland and liberallv support
its charities. Mr. Merritt has not allowed hi*
business affairs to so engross his attention as to
cause him to fail in his duty as a citizen, hut has
always been looked upon as one readv to help in
the management of public affairs. While a re-i

456

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

dent of Illinois he served as school trustee, also
member of the district school board and justice
of the peace, and in Oakland, from 1873 to 1879,
he acted as justice of the peace. Since his re-
tirement from active business he has been occu-
pied with his own personal ' interests, being spe-
cially active in Masonic circles, of which organiza-
tion he has been a member for many years, now
being associated with the lodge, chapter and com-
mandery of Oakland, and is also a member of the
Scottish Rite and a Thirty-third degree Mason,
acting as secretary of the Scottish Rite bodies of
Oakland. The Thirty-third degree was conferred
upon him January 16, 1887. As a Republican
politically Mr. Merritt served on the election
board from 1873 to 1900, when his son succeeded
him. Through his many years of business con-
nection and being so prominently identified with
Masonic interests, Mr. Merritt has an extensive
acquaintance throughout the state of California,
and this combined with a kindly and courteous
personality has won him many friends.

LEVI SAMUEL BIXBY.

Occupying a position of esteem and respect
among his fellow-citizens of Oakland is Levi
Samuel Bixby. one of the pioneers of this sec-
tion, whose father also gave his labors in the
early upbuilding and development of the state.
The elder, Levi Rogers Bixby, was born in
Westford, Mass., October 31, 1818, and there
grew to manhood, learning the trade of cabinet
maker. He came to California in 1852 via the
Isthmus of Panama and located at Coulterville,
Mariposa county, where he followed his trade
for many years. He enlisted in Company H,
Seventh Regiment California Volunteer Infan-
try, for service in the Civil war, after which he
received an honorable discharge. For the first
time in sixteen years he returned home, his fam-
ily having long since thought him dead. Then
with his family he came back to California and
locating in Oakland made this city his home until

his death. His wife was in maidenhood Martha
Maloon, whose family history is given at length
on another page of this volume. They were the
parents of three children, two daughters, Emma
and Jane, being deceased, and the son, Levi Sam-
uel Bixby, now residing at No. 1470 Brush
street, Oakland.

Levi Samuel Bixby was born in Boston, Mass.,
November 26, 1844, and there grew to maturity,
receiving a common school and also a high school
education. His studies were interrupted by the
call to arms, and August 10, 1862, he enlisted in
Company K, Thirty-fifth Regiment Massachu-
setts Infantry, and was assigned to the Ninth
Army Corps, following which he participated in
the battles of South Mountain, Antietam, Fred-
ericksburg, the Siege of Vicksburg, and others of
importance. As a result of the hardships of the
Mississippi campaign he contracted malarial
fever and was sent to the hospital at Camp Den-
nison, Ohio, and was there adjudged incapable
of service at the front. He was then transferred
to Company F, Seventeenth Regiment Veteran
Reserve Corps, in which he became a corporal.
Honorably discharged in July, 1865, m Indian-
apolis, he returned home and once more took up
his studies, entering Bryant & Stratton's busi-
ness college. He graduated February 20, 1868,
and during the same year accompanied his par-
ents to California. Since that time he has held
various positions, for four years serving as dep-
uty superintendent of the streets of Oakland
under M. K. Miller. He is now acting as store-
keeper and ganger under civil service in the
internal revenue office, first district of California.
For about seven years he was a member of the
Oakland Guards under Captains H. N. Morse
and A. W. Burrell, and also the Exempt Fire-
men of Oakland, having been one of the volun-
teers until that became a pay department of the
city in 1874. Fraternally he belongs to the
Knights of Pythias, Independent Order of Odd
Fellows, Masons, and the Grand Army of the
Republic, being past post commander of this
last-named organization. He organized the
Col. E. D. Baker Camp No. 5, Sons of Veter-
ans, and served as its first captain for one year.

Mr. Bixby's home has been located at No.

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECOUU

4.',:

1470 Brush street since 1871, this being the
first residence built in this section of the city.
In Oakland he married Sarah Ella Gates, and
they have one son, Wilfred Everett, a graduate
in 1907 of the medical department of the Uni-
versity of California, and is now serving as assis-
tant under Dr. J. D. Long on the state board of
health. He has offices in the Union Savings
Bank Building in Oakland, and is also medical
instructor in the Oakland College of Medicine.
He was married April 21, 1908, to Miss Grace
A. Foizy, of Berkeley, and now resides in Oak-
land. Mr. Bixby is a member of the Baptist
Church and his wife of the Methodist Episcopal
Church.

MYRON T. DUSINBURY.

Since 1862 Myron T. Dusinbury has been a
resident of California and a citizen of Oakland,
where he has been identified with banking inter-
ests and the real estate business. He is the de-
scendant of Holland ancestry of Quaker stock, the
name being originally spelled Van Dusinberg ; his
paternal great-grandfather was the emigrant who
located in New York. Mr. Dusinbury's father,
John B., was born in 1802 in Vermont, and in
manhood engaged as a manufacturer, eventually
coming to California, where both himself and
wife passed the remainder of their lives, his
death occurring at the age of ninety years.

Myron T. Dusinbury was born in Rensselaer
county, N. Y., July 17, 1838, and, being taken
by his parents to Lockport, 111., there attended
the public school taught by his aunt, who now
resides at Kankakee, 111., at the age of ninety-six
years. Mr. Dusinbury's studies were interrupted
by the call to arms in 1861, and although but a
lad in years he enlisted among the seventy-five
thousand volunteers called for. Later he learned
the painter's trade and also engaged in a mer-
cantile enterprise for a short time. One of his
sisters, Lydia M., having married A. J. Stevens
and come to California in 1861, he decided to try
his fortunes on the coast, and accordingly in 1862

he made the journey wot by way of the Isthmus
of Panama. His first work in the state \%a> in
the building of the first wharf, for which he
sawed all but three of the piles; after this he was
engaged in the building of the railroad t'rotn the
pier, the first train from the boat to Broadway
being run September 3, 1863. Mr. Dusinbury
worked a few months at the station and was then
made conductor of the first train, continuing in
this capacity for the period of six years. During
his time of service the railroad was extended to
Thirteenth avenue, East Oakland. May 1. 1S70,
he became identified with the banking inter • t
of Oakland, becoming paying and receiving teller
in the Oakland Bank of Savings, then located in
the Wilcox building. Later he acted as ex-
change clerk for both the commercial and sav-
ings departments, and also note clerk for a time.
He was thus employed at the time of the bank's
removal to its present location. He remained
in this connection until 1S88, when he withdrew
from banking interests and became identified with
the realty interests of Oakland, associating him-
self with other enterprising men, the firm being
known as that of Dusinbury & Wurtz. I-itcr he
became independent in his work and subdivided
several tracts of land, one of which consisted
of eight acres extending from Adaline to Linden,
and from Sixteenth to Fourteenth streets. His
home was erected in 1871 from the plans of Dr.
Merritt. and here he has ever since resided, his
being one of the first houses in the section. The
street upon which it is located was known as
Sailor's Lane, and was the second street mac-
adamized in the city.

The marriage of Mr. Dusinbury united him
with Miss Prances Plummcr. a daughter of Mar-
shall D. Plummer, a pioneer of '49. whose per-
sonal biography appears on another page of {Mfl
volume. They became the parents of four chil-
dren, namely: Harry E.. engaged in the ifttor-
ance business in Denver. Colo., and has one ion :
Tohn Benjamin, engaged with the West Fuel
Company, of Oakland ; Man- W.. deceased, who
married Tames Merritt and had two children.
James Myron and Ruth May : and Marshall P..
who died in 1903. at the age of twenty-three
years. Mr. Dusinbury is a Mason, being a life

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

458

member of Oakland Lodge No. 188, F. &
A. M., of which he became a charter member in
1868 and being one of four left of the original
number. He officiated as treasurer for years.
He is also a member of Oakland Chapter No. 36,
R. A. M. He was active in the organization of
the Athenian Club, of which he is still a mem-
ber. Politically he is a stanch advocate of Re-
publican principles and is active along party
lines, having served as delegate to both city and
county conventions.

WILLIAM BARNET HARDY.

Numbered among the early pioneers of Oak-
land is William Barnet Hardy, one of the early
settlers of this section and for many years en-
gaged in mercantile pursuits. He is a native of
Otsego county, N. Y., and was born March 21,
1827. His parents were John and Elizabeth
(Moore) Hardy, the father being a native of
Scotland and brought to America by the paternal
grandfather when he was but four years old.
Mr. and Mrs. Hardy became the parents of three
sons and three daughters, of whom only William
B. now survives.

When thirteen years old, William Barnet
Hardy accompanied his parents from New York
state to Michigan, and there in the vicinity of
Detroit he spent the remaining years of his boy-
hood. He received a good education through
the medium of the public schools and also private
institutions, his first occupation in manhood
being as a teacher in the schools of Michigan.
Later he taught in Illinois also, following other
employment during a part of this time, being
located in the pineries of Michigan and in Cal-
houn county, 111. In St. Louis, Mo., November
12, 1852, he married Ermina M. Bacon, a native
of Calhoun county, 111., and daughter of Orrin
Creighton and Sarah Ida (Mounts) Bacon, set-,
tiers of that portion of the Prairie state in 1825
when it was largelv given over to the huts of
the red men. In 1854 Mr. Hardy and his wife

outfitted for the perilous trip across the plains,
joining a train bound for California, which they
reached without any serious mishap. They re-
mained in San Jose for a short time, then bought
a ranch in Alameda county, near San Leandro;
he secured a squatter's title to his property, and
in the conflicts that followed over land rights, he
left the property. Removing to Oakland in 1858,
he engaged in business with his brother-in-law,
W. B. Bacon, in the express and mercantile
business. They continued their partnership for
about three years, when Mr. Hardy purchased
the entire interest and pursued his business oc-
cupations for many years. He acquired consider-
able means during the passing years, but met
with some reverses in 1893, the year of the wide-
spread panic. Since that time he has sold his
business, which consisted of one of the finest
book and stationery stores in Oakland, to his
sons, and they are now managing this enterprise
at No. 961 Broadway. Mr. Hardy has retired
from active business pursuits and is spending
the evening of his days in peace and contentment
in a comfortable little bungalow home at No.
2031 Richmond boulevard.

Mr. and Mrs. Hardy became the parents of a
large family of children, named in order of birth
as follows : Lillian V. ; W. Frank ; Mina B., wife
of Albert N. Dennison, of Oakland ; Charles G.,
who is married and living in Oakland ; Tracy S.,
married and living in Oakland (these two sons
being the owners of the business formerly con-
ducted by their father) ; Esther D., wife of Noah
G. Rogers, of Los Gatos, Cal. ; Sophia B., wife
of G. H. White, of Marin county, Cal. ; John
Ross, married and living in San Diego, Cal. ;
Wright B., located in Schenectady, N. Y. ; Sum-
ner, a dentist, and Samuel P., who is married
and lives in Nevada.

During the many years of his residence in Oak-
land Mr. Hardy has taken a keen and practical
interest in all movements looking toward the
furtherance of the general welfare. He served
as supervisor at the time the new courthouse was
built, also served as a member of the board of
trustees of the public schools at the time it was
changed to the board of education. His voice
has always been heard in matters of public im-

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

461

provement, and his suggestions have proven
practical and beneficial. He has never cared
greatly for fraternal organizations, although he
has at different times been identified with the
Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the
Ancient Order of United Workmen. Mr. Hardy
enjoys a wide esteem among his fellow-citizens,
justly earned by his years of integrity in business
and helpfulness as a citizen.

THOMAS F. BACHELDER.

The Bachelder family, represented in Oakland
by Thomas F. Bachelder, a successful lawyer
and a citizen of worth and ability, was estab-
lished on American soil during the colonial pe-
riod of our history, three brothers emigrating
from England and locating in the colonies, one
in Massachusetts, a second in New Hampshire
and a third in Maine. New England remained
the home of the various branches of the Bachel-
ders, and there they rose to prominence as busi-
ness men, statesmen and scholars. Maine is the
native state of Thomas F. Bachelder, his birth
having occurred in the town of Corinna, Penob-
scot county, December 16, 1834; both parents,
Dodge and Mary P. (Lynnell) Bachelder, were
natives of the Pine Tree state, where their en-
tire lives were passed. For many years the
father was engaged in the lumber business and
the manufacture of shingles, and being success-
ful in business, accumulated a substantial com-
petence. Trained in the loyalty of his ancestors,
he enlisted for service in the Mexican war, and
died while in service, at Pueblo, Mexico. He
was a man of enterprise and ability and enjoyed
the respect and esteem of his fellow citizens.

Thomas F. Bachelder received his education
primarily in the common schools of his native
state, preparing for college in the academy at
Corinna. Subsequently he entered what was
then known as Waterville College, in Waterville.
Somerset county, Me., this afterwards being
merged into the Colby University. He was grad-

uated from this institution in 1858, after which
he began the reading of law with J. M. Ilcll, of
Somerset county, continuing his studies until his
admission to the bar in the spring of 1859. Fol-
lowing this he immigrated to what wa> then
known as the "west," and established a law office
in Grand Rapids, Wood county, Wis., and there
began the practice of his profession. He re-
mained in this location from 1859 to 1864, when,
in company with two brothers, he outfitted for
the trip across the plains to California. They
arrived without accident at Salt Lake City, and
there stopped for a time to rest their teams ami
get supplies. While there they were told of the
unfriendly attitude of the Indians, which the)
found out for themselves after again resuming
the journey, as they had many thrilling experi-
ences before reaching California. They were at-
tacked several times in what was then called a
running fight, the Indians being mounted on
ponies and shooting their arrows as they r. ><1<\
One man in the train was wounded five times,
one arrow passing entirely through his arm.
However, they met with no serious encounter
and succeeded in reaching their destination in
safety. Following the general trend of popula-
tion they first located at Placerville. and there
engaged in mining, but not meeting with the
success anticipated they went on to San Fran-
cisco. There Mr. Bachelder established a law
office and resumed the practice of his profession,
which continued uninterruptedly for about twen-
ty-two years. It was in 1887 that he first became
interested in a ranch comprising twenty-five hun-
dred acres of land, there engaging in the raising
of stock, hay and grain. Not caring for an agri-
cultural life, however, he decided to divide his
ranch into tracts of ten and thirty acres and sell
it off. and being near Oakland he readily found
a market at a handsome figure. After disposing
of his real estate he returned to San Franr
and resumed his law practice, remaining a n
dent of that city for but a brief time when he
came to Oakland and opened an office at V'
Broadway, and has here built up a lucrative
clientele, having been connected with manv im-
portant cases.

In 1858 Mr. Bachelder was united in marriage

462 HISTORICAL AND BI

with Miss Charlotte A. Crommett, of Waterville,
Me., and a daughter of Alfred Crommett, a sub-
stantial citizen of that place. Two children have
blessed their union, Walter T., superintendent and
manager of the Canton Mining Company, on
Feather river, and Maybell, Mrs. R. W. Curtis, of
Oakland. In his fraternal relations Mr. Bachel-
der is a member of Occidental Lodge, No. 22, F.
& A. M., of San Francisco, and also belongs to
the Knights of Pythias, being past grand chan-
cellor, and was a representative to the national
supreme lodge, which met in Milwaukee, Wis., in
1890, and again in 1892 at Kansas City, Mo.
He is prominent socially, and is held in the high-
est esteem by all who know him.

GEORGE W. BRETT.

The two families, paternal and maternal, rep-
resented among the pioneers of California by the
late George W. Brett, were named among the
founders of our country, his first American an-
cestor on the paternal side, Seth Brett, having
located in the colonies in 1712. Descended from
him and likewise prominent in the development
of whatever section they made their home, were
Simeon, Rufus, Ezra and George W. In 1775
Rufus Brett married Susanna Cary, the sixth in
descent from John Alden, and thus on the ma-
ternal side the family are descended from May-
flower ancestry. Ezra Brett married Alice R.
Robinson, and George W. Brett married Susan
Wharflf.

George W. Brett was born in Paris, Me., April
14, 18 10, and in the common schools of his na-
tive state received a very limited education,
years of experience, reading and observation
tending to make of him the well-informed and
helpful citizen of maturer years. His father
was a blacksmith and he learned this trade un-
der his instruction, living, however, with an
uncle from the age of ten years. He followed
his trade in Auburn, Me., for many years, was
there married and reared a family of fourteen

GRAPHICAL RECORD.

children, of whom six are now living. A brother
of Mr. Brett, John R. Brett, came to California
in an early day and became a wealthy merchant
of Marysville, and through his representations
and those of other of his relatives George W. was
induced to come to the Pacific coast, which he
did in 1857. Upon his arrival in California he
at once established a blacksmith shop in San
Antonio and there carried on his business for
about three years. Disposing of his interests
at that time, he went to Carson City, Nev., and
there assisted in the operation of a stamp mill
for the period of a year. Returning to Cali-
fornia, he established a business in San Fran-
cisco, but finally located again in his old home in
Auburn, Me., where he passed the remainder of
his years, attaining the ripe age of ninety-three.

But one of Mr. Brett's children is located in
California, she being Mrs. Alice R. Chase, who
was born in Maine and there educated, after
which she came to California in i860 via the
Isthmus of Panama. Here she married Amos
L. Bangle, also a pioneer of California, and
had four children, namely : Newton Brett, who
died at the age of nineteen months ; Martha Amy,
who was born in Oakland, educated in the pub-
lic schools, then married E. F. Richardson, a
noted attorney of Denver, and has four living
children ; George Edgar, a jeweler, who is mar-
ried and has two children ; and Amos Lin-
coln, professor of music in Oakland, who
is married and has one child. Their first
home in Oakland was at the corner of
Nineteenth street and Eleventh avenue, where
Mr. Bangle died February 25, 1872. Mr. Ban-
gle was one of the early pioneers of Oakland and
established the first drug store here ; he was a
cornetist of unusual ability, also of an inventive
turn of mind, having patented a printing press.
Mrs. Bangle married Ducan McFarlane, a pi-
oneer of Oakland, a railroad man and miner, and
his death occurred in 1887. September 7, 1903,
she became the wife of Christopher Columbus
Chase ; he was born in Maine July 8, 1833, and
there learned the trade of painter and paper
hanger. He came to Oakland in December, 1876,
returned to Maine in 1877, and then in Novem-
ber, 1902, once more located in Oakland, where

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

4G.i

he has since resided, their home having been
erected in 1877 by Mrs. Chase. Mr. Chase is a
veteran of the Civil war, having enlisted in Com-
pany I, Twenty-second Regiment Maine Infantry.

CHARLES D. HEYWOOD.

The Heywood family have maintained for
many years a place of importance in the business
life of California, of which state, Samuel Hey-
wood, the father of the present generation, be-
came a pioneer in 1850. He was the descendant
of old New England ancestry, having been born
in the state of Maine in November, 1833 ; his
father Z. B. Heywood, was a prominent lumber-
man and a successful business man for many
years. Samuel Heywood was educated in his
native state and until he was seventeen years
old enjoyed the benefit of his father's train-
ing ; at that age he was fired with the ambition
to try his fortunes in the far famed land of Cali-
fornia, and accordingly made the trip to San
Francisco. With two of his brothers he then
formed a partnership for the conduct of lum-
ber interests, the firm being known as that of
the Heywood Brothers, and located in San Fran-
cisco for several years.

In 1900 Mr. Heywood established the business
now conducted by his sons, having as a partner
at that time Thomas Richardson, who continued
as its secretary until he sold his interests to
Mr. Heywood. This company is known as
the West Berkeley Lumber Company, and after
the father's death in 1903 was incorporated as
such with a capital stock of $50,000, the mother
and sons retaining the entire interest. Charles
D. Heywood, who was born in Berkeley and
there educated, became president of the com-
pany, while his brother, Frank Heywood, as-
sumed the duties of secretary. In 1907 they dis-
posed of their original property and established
their present firm at the foot of University
avenue, their buildings extending to the bay in
order that large vessels may come direct to
the wharf for loading and unloading. This is

one of the large enterprises of Berkeley and ha-,
been instrumental in the commercial advancement
of this section. The sons are prominent in pub-
lic affairs, as was their father, the elder Mr. Hey-
wood serving as a member of the Board of Trus-
tees of Berkeley for years and acting as presi-
dent, while he was also a member of the Board
of Education. In politics he was a stanch ad-
vocate of Republican principles, and in religion
was a member of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and a liberal contributor to all its
charities. He was a prominent Mason, Mffffging
to Live Oak and Durant Lodges.

Charles D. Heywood is prominent in the
Masonic organization, belonging to Durant
Lodge No. 268, F. & A. M.f Berkeley Chapter
No. 92, R. A. M., and Berkeley Commandcry
No. 42, K. T. He is helpful as a citizen and
always ready to lend his aid, either financially
or personally, toward the general advancement
of the community.

WILBER WALKER.

As secretary of the Merchants Exchange of
Oakland, Wilber Walker is exercising a strong
and marked influence on the business affairs of
this city, where he has been a resident practically
since boyhood. He was born in Bangor, Mc..
September 4, 1847, a son °f an(l Emclinc
(Brown) Walker, the only child born to his
parents. The father was also a native of Maine,
his birth having occurred at Beans Corner in
1806; he received his preliminary education in the
public schools of Bangor and later studied and
practiced law in that city. In 1854 he came to
California by way of the Horn, bringing with
him his family, and located in Happy Valley,
where the old Palace hotel stood. Later he came
to Clinton, now known as East Oakland, tod
engaged in lumbering and the manufacture of
shingles for about two years and then bc^an the
practice of law. He was elected justice of the
peace and later was elected one of the first su-

464

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD.

perior judges of Alameda county, and in 1863
was elected to the state assembly, in which he
served one term. He made Oakland his home
until his death, which occurred May 13, 1869.
His wife survived him some years and passed
away in the home of her son Wilber, in Oakland.

Wilber Walker was reared in Oakland and
educated in the public schools, after which, in
1865, he entered the College of California, which
became the University of California. The class
of which he was a member was the first gradua-
ting class of the present University of California.
In 1867 he took up bookkeeping and for thirteen
years was employed with a planing-mill company.
Later for a time he followed lumbering and
finally became proprietor of a hardware estab-
lishment, which business continued for about six-
teen years. During this time, in 1898, he became
secretary of the Merchants Exchange of Oak-
land and has since acted in that capacity, now
devoting his entire time and attention to that
work. However, for eight years he filled this
office as well as conducted his business. He also
served as president of the Board of Library Trus-
tees for two years. In fraternal circles he has
been a Mason and a member of Oakland Lodge
No. 188 for thirty-eight years; is also a mem-
ber of the Ancient Order of United Workmen in
which he has passed all the chairs of the Brook-

lyn Lodge and was a representative in the Grand
Lodge. During the trying times following the
great San Francisco disaster, Mr. Walker was
made secretary of the relief committee and gave
valuable service in the work.

In Oakland in 1872, Mr. Walker was united
in marriage with Miss Eva Jane Smith, daugh-
ter of John F. and Margaret (Home) Smith;
she was a native of Brooklyn, N. Y. Four chil-
dren were born of this union, of whom one son,
Edgar Wakeman, died at the age of four years;
the others are : Wilber, Jr., who is married and
engaged in the mantel and tile business on Tele-
graph avenue in Oakland ; Walter Smith, a
machinist, who is married and living in Oakland ;
and Margaret, at home. The home of the fam-
ily is located at No. 519 East Twelfth street in
Oakland, the residence having been built in 1876
by Mr. Walker, whose father purchased a
block of land at this point in the early history of
the city. Mr. Walker has always been a very
public-spirited citizen, taking a keen interest in
the general welfare of the community and freely
giving his time and means toward this end. He
is a man of unquestioned integrity and as such
has been made trustee and executor of many
estates, two of which are now in his hands for
settlement.

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